Date: Fri, 5 May 2000 11:52:20 +1000 From: "Doug Young" <dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au> To: <jgrosch@mooseriver.com> Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: "bad day_of_the_month" (yes really !!!) cron questions Message-ID: <01ba01bfb634$baf75830$847e03cb@ROADRUNNER> References: <018e01bfb62c$58481b00$847e03cb@ROADRUNNER> <20000504180916.A8833@mooseriver.com>
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Thanks for the response Josef, however I did read both "man cron" & "man crontab" and the reason I sent that message to the list is that I couldn't comprehend what the man stuff was on about, and for that matter there's nothing helpful either there or in the mailing list archives that talks about about this particular issue. As far as I can understand, the crontab command is irrelevant to what I'm trying to do, which is simply use the default system crontab "/etc/crontab" to email stuff like ppp.logs to me periodically . There doesn't appear to be any instructions in either "man cron" or "man crontab" on what to put in the "/etc/crontab" file to achieve the desired result. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Josef Grosch" <jgrosch@mooseriver.com> To: "Doug Young" <dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au> Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Sent: Friday, May 05, 2000 11:09 AM Subject: Re: "bad day_of_the_month" (yes really !!!) cron questions > 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
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