Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 15:47:25 +0300 From: Odhiambo Washington <wash@wananchi.com> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: thomas@pbegames.com, ahl@austclear.com.au Subject: Re: Crontab - Biweekly events? Message-ID: <20010802154725.B24967@everest.wananchi.com> In-Reply-To: <200107192337.JAA04489@tungsten.austclear.com.au> References: <thomas@pbegames.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20010719175024.02510170@pbegames.com> <200107192337.JAA04489@tungsten.austclear.com.au>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
* Tony Landells <ahl@austclear.com.au> [20010720 02:37]: writing on the subject 'Re: Crontab - Biweekly events?' Tony> Tony> thomas@pbegames.com said: Tony> > I have a task I want to run every other week on a specific day, say Tony> > Tuesday. I can't see a way to convince cron to do this. Anyone know Tony> > how? Tony> Tony> You can't. Cron doesn't support this. Tony> Tony> However, what you can do is wrap your stuff in a script that either Tony> creates a "flag" file somewhere (if it doesn't exist) and runs your Tony> stuff or deletes the flag file (if it exists) and exits. Then run Tony> that every Tuesday from crontab. Tony> Tony> Alternatively, you can use "at" to schedule the job initially, and Tony> then have it reschedule itself for two weeks time. You probably Tony> want it to email you a reminder that it's rescheduled itself too... Tony> Tony> Actually, I like the first one a lot, since you could also use it Tony> for every second day, month, ... Tony> Tony> Actually, a generic "wrapper" could even be made to run the task Tony> every <arbitrary number> of days/weeks/years/... Long time ago (not quite long really) someone called Crist J. Clark posted something that would seem to diagree with Tony's assertion that this cannot be done in a crontab. I will paste here the discussion verbatim: <snip> > > I am looking for a crontab entry that runs my command on > > the first thursday of every month at 6 am. I thought the > > following would work but it doesn't: > > > > AFAIK, this cannot be done with a crontab entry. However, you may be > able to wrap /path/to/my/command with a script that exits if the day of the > month is greater than 7, and then use a crontab entry that simply > specifies to run on every thursday. No need for a wrapper, just put it all in the crontab, 0 6 * * 4 if [ `date +\%d` -le 7 ]; then /path/to/my/command; fi -- Crist J. Clark cjclark@alum.mit.edu </snip> Maybe that will give this guy an insight. I've been looking into running a cron job like this and was attempting this, although it's not yet worked DATE=`date +\%w` # Will give me the numerical date. alligator# bash wash:/home/wash# DATE=`date +\%w` wash:/home/wash# echo $DATE 4 So today is Thursday, the 4th day. Tuesday is then the 2nd day. Can't we then do something like if [ $DATE = "2" ]; then /run/some/command ; fi to make his command run every Tuesday?? Can't that be made to work? Please lemme know. -Wash -- Odhiambo Washington Wananchi Online Ltd., wash@wananchi.com 1st Flr Loita Hse. Tel: 254 2 313985 Loita Street., Fax: 254 2 313922 PO Box 10286,00100-NAIROBI,KE. When one rows, it is not the rowing which moves the ship. Rowing is only a magical ceremony by means of which, one compels a demon to move the ship. -Friedrich Nietzsche To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20010802154725.B24967>