Cron

Anon

Hey all,

Im trying my hand at setting up a cron job to do some emailing for my but havn't the slightest idea..   I searched the site to no avail.  Anyone have a url you might share.  Or a personal example :)

thanks

jim

Anon

first have a look at "man 5 crontab"

the thing you probably whant to do then (the cron job) is:

lynx -dump http://server/send_mail.php > /dev/null

where server is the position your side lays, and send_mail the script you want to start using the cron job...

cya Rob

Anon

Rod,
Seems your the expert, this is what im tyring to do.. Simply run a script(php) every 15 minutes. The script will handle everything else. All i need to do is tell the cron to run it (lets call it mail.php3) every 15 minutes.

i really dont have a clue how. Im in telnet in pico with a new file but now what?

thanks in advance..

jim

Anon

Sure, but if the cron is running on the webserver itself, don't bother
with the server name (which would have to change if the host name
did); instead, just ask for

http://localhost/send_mail.php

Anon

Well, did you look at the manual page for crontab?

Assuming you're on a Linux system, you would edit the
file /etc/crontab (must be superuser i.e. root to update
it.) Other unix systems <i>might</i> have the file
in a different place (though I doubt it) but that's the
reason for looking at the man page on the actual
system. Then, just do what the manpage says
and/or use the lines already in the crontab as a
reference for what to do.

Anon

flush

ok, because of the expert thing (and only because of that <- you know how to get a guy, don't you ? :-))

I did it this morning (the first time), to be honest...

you add a line to your /etc/crontab (as kirk parker said) the line suiting your needs should look like this:
0, 15, 30, 45 'username' /the directory of your shell script

where username is the username you want the script to be run (i think its optional - put root in myself (but thats only a test server ...) and the directory of your script is sort like /var/www/cron-scripts/send-mail

in the send-mail script you put the line i posted before (I still would suggest not to use the localhost <- i think you get a problem, as soon as the apache serves more than one side), then make it executable (chmod 700 send-mail) ... wait 15 minutes and feel proud of yourself (and me :-)

cya Rob

Anon

Also, you don' t have to edit the superuser /etc/crontab file; every user can run his or her own cron processes.

crontab -e will open your crontab file.
crontab -l will list your current crontab file.

If you are not vi-literate, export $EDITOR=pico and $VISUAL=pico in your .login file so that tools like these will use your favorite editor.