Using CRON with php

Rulkster

I am a little confused with the time intervals with cron. I know how to use cron to run a php script every hour or every minute. How do I use it to run the script once, say every Saturday at 12:01 am

/php/path /script/path >/dev/null

I am not sure what to put in the asterisks fields above

Thanks for any help at all!🙂

LordShryku

Do a man crontab at your shell prompt to pull up the man pages. It should explain it for you.

Rulkster

Unfortunately, the man crontab doesnt explain that part of the command

maxpup979

As you can see, thereare seven fields with information. They are, in correct order: minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week, user and command. Some of the fields contain stars (*) which means any value will fit.

this post taken directly from :
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~forsberg/linux/cron.html

Rulkster

Yes, i understand that but what are valid numeric values for each asterisk. For example:

minute field - is it 0 - 59 or 1 - 60
Hour field - 1- 24 or 0-23
and especially the day-of-week field (0-6 or 1-7) and what day does it start on (is 0 monday or 1 is monday, etc...)

keith73

Originally posted by Rulkster
Yes, i understand that but what are valid numeric values for each asterisk. For example:

minute field - is it 0 - 59 or 1 - 60
Hour field - 1- 24 or 0-23
and especially the day-of-week field (0-6 or 1-7) and what day does it start on (is 0 monday or 1 is monday, etc...)

Time is zero based, day of month is not, day of week is

hour: 0-23
minute: 0-59
dayofweek: 0-6
dayofmonth: 1-31

if you want to do something at 2am every sunday:

0 2 1 /run/my/script.php

and you could find some more info here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cron&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
http://www.unixgeeks.org/security/newbie/unix/cron-1.html

keith

dalecosp

Originally posted by Rulkster
and what day does it start on (is 0 monday or 1 is monday, etc...)

This is dependent on which cron you're using. 0 and 7 are both Sunday in Vixie cron, I think BSD and ATT crons disagree. However, the *BSD's use Vixie cron; I doubt you're likely to be using any other at this point?

Anyone know for sure?