Automatic program executing

Anon

Is there a posibility to execute a program/function (in php) every 24 hours for example? It should execute automaticaly in the background not when a page is loaded (executing PHP...)

example: When a user doesn't respond to an forum within 3 days, an email is send to him...

thanks
eddie

Anon

Use a cron job for this: it can execute wget or lynx to load the page required to trigger the job, if you don't have stand-alone PHP installed on the server.

Anon

How to use Cron Job ?
i'm beginner in server using

Anon

I'm a beginner too, so all I can do is pass on what a webhost told me. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds straightfoward:

"You can set up a cron job with the standard unix syntax 'crontab -e' (w/o the quotes). That'll send you into an editor (vi) where you can set up a cron job. If you don't know how, I highly recommend checking out the chapter 5 man page for crontab...'man 5 crontab'.

"If you don't know how to use vi (or hate it!), you can also create a regular file named .crontab (well, it can be named anything), and then typing 'crontab .crontab'...this will put whatever cron jobs you've listed in that file into your crontab."

Nathaniel, DreamHost Customer Support Team, www.dreamhost.com

HTH,
Beth

Anon

Read

    man 1 crontab

for the command itself, and

    man 8 crontab

for a description of the file format.

If you "own" the whole server and have root access, you can always just add entries to the master crontab for the machine, but on a shared machine a user crontab is your only answer.