From owner-freebsd-questions Thu May 4 18: 9:49 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mooseriver.com (superior.mooseriver.com [209.249.56.198]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2591937B5B4 for ; Thu, 4 May 2000 18:09:40 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jgrosch@mooseriver.com) Received: (from jgrosch@localhost) by mooseriver.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id SAA08945; Thu, 4 May 2000 18:09:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jgrosch) Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 18:09:16 -0700 From: Josef Grosch To: Doug Young Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: "bad day_of_the_month" (yes really !!!) cron questions Message-ID: <20000504180916.A8833@mooseriver.com> Reply-To: jgrosch@mooseriver.com References: <018e01bfb62c$58481b00$847e03cb@ROADRUNNER> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: <018e01bfb62c$58481b00$847e03cb@ROADRUNNER>; from dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au on Fri, May 05, 2000 at 10:51:23AM +1000 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, May 05, 2000 at 10:51:23AM +1000, Doug Young wrote: > I'd like to have remote systems email a copy of various logs at to me at > sheduled times, & I understand that "cron" is supposed to be capable of > doing this. What I don't understand is exactly how to go about it. > > I followed the instructions in Complete FreeBSD, and even though there's a > file "/usr/bin/crontab", when I run "crontab -l" I get a message "no crontab > for root" > Now this sounds weird, because I understood from "man cron" & "man crontab" > that a bunch of processes are controlled from the root cron, so what gives > here ?? > > I then tried running "crontab crontab", but that just told me > "crontab":0: bad day_of_month > crontab: errors in crontab file, can't install sigh... Now would be a good time to go back and read the man pages for cron, and crontab. It is important to read _ALL_ the words not every third. Had you read the man page for contab you would have found that crontab -l lists the contents of the crontab file for a user and crontab -e allows you to edit a crontab file. Try the following commands man cron man crontab man 5 crontab The last command tells man that you want to see the man page for crontab from section 5 of the man pages. That is what the notation "crontab(5)" means. *NOTE to self* write a short how-to explaining how the man page system works. This appears to be hidden knowledge. Josef -- Josef Grosch | Another day closer to a | FreeBSD 4.0 jgrosch@MooseRiver.com | Micro$oft free world | UNIX for the masses To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message