Crontab question (and shameless plug:))

Anon

Thanks to you guys that told me what a cron was, and after much searching the net, I know have an idea what cron is etc....

(BTW - CORE PHP Programming doesn't mention. Still worth the $$$ just ticked it don't mention cron.)

Anyway, I am purchasing server space on a remote machine (hyperhosting.com, wicked fast, wicked good support, tell Tood that Icehawg sent ya heh) and I am wondering .... is the crontab something I would put on the root of my URL or does it need to be implemented by the hosting company? Is it just a text file named crontab?

Thanks in advance.

sepodati

It's something that should already be on your server. Whether you have access to it or not is something that you should ask your administrator.

I've done this, but I can never remember how I did it the last time, so I'm not much help. Try entering 'man cron' at your unix prompt and read that for how to do it.

You basically create a file of what commands you want to run in your cron job.

lynx http://www.yourdomain.com/file.php

for example. I can never remember what all the asteriks are for (minute, hour, day , week...??). Then you run cron to tell it what file to look at.

cron -l .crontab_file

I think the -l is for load. Look at 'man cron' on your unix prompt to make sure. You can remove it or view it too, with different flags...

I know that's not much help, I need to commit this stuff to memory... 🙂

---John Holmes...

kparker

I know that's not much help, I need to commit this stuff to memory...

Why should you do that? If the man pages aren't working, chances are the whole system's down, in which case you can't edit your crontab anyway! :-)

sepodati

I've never found the man page that shows what the first part means. The minute,hour,day,week,year (is that right?) part... That's what I have to search for...how to set that part up. 🙂

---John Holmes...

kparker

Ah! The problem is, there is a command called 'crontab', as well as a configuration file named 'crontab'. If you just type in 'man crontab', you get the former. Try typing 'man 5 crontab' to tell man you want the 'crontab' entry from section 5 of the manual.

sepodati

I guess that's where I was going wrong. Thanks alot..

---John Holmes...

Anon

I might have a handle on it now. Thanks again.

Anon

The -l argument lists the jobs in the crontab file.