A customer writes:
"We want to use the default cron set up with our Red Hat (/etc/cron.hourly, /etc/cron.daily). We have placed files in these directories and they work great. According to the Red Hat Sys Adm guide, we should be able to put files in the /etc/cron.d directory when we want to run them at times other than hourly, daily, weekly. I placed a test file in the /etc/cron.d dir that has the same format as cron. This file is set to run every 5 minutes. It does not run."
The clue there is the "has the same format as cron". Files put in cron.d have a similar format to normal cron jobs, but need one extra parameter. A "normal" crontab file might look like:
*/5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/myjob
but if it is to be put in cron.d it needs a user name before the actual command:
*/5 * * * * root /usr/local/bin/myjob
See Cron is not working also.
Got something to add? Send me email.
More Articles by Tony Lawrence © 2011-03-18 Tony Lawrence
While we all ooh and ahh over the reports and graphs, Google is quietly building an incredible pile of extremely valuable information. (Tony Lawrence)
Printer Friendly Version
Cron job doesn't run Copyright © March 2005 Tony Lawrence
Have you tried Searching this site?
This is a Unix/Linux resource website. It contains technical articles about Unix, Linux and general computing related subjects, opinion, news, help files, how-to's, tutorials and more.
Contact us
Printer Friendly Version