From owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Sep 19 17:42:37 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CAE8C16A4CE for ; Sun, 19 Sep 2004 17:42:37 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mproxy.gmail.com (rproxy.gmail.com [64.233.170.202]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 81A3E43D2F for ; Sun, 19 Sep 2004 17:42:37 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from robg.list@gmail.com) Received: by mproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id 79so891656rnk for ; Sun, 19 Sep 2004 10:42:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.38.82.75 with SMTP id f75mr651821rnb; Sun, 19 Sep 2004 10:42:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.38.83.59 with HTTP; Sun, 19 Sep 2004 10:42:36 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <5c389d3b040919104228593a14@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 13:42:36 -0400 From: robg To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: can someone explain crontab to me better? X-BeenThere: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: robg List-Id: Gathering place for new users List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 17:42:37 -0000 hi, i am having a hard time understanding crontab after reading http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/configtuning-cron.html .. i still can't understand the minutes/hours... when you specify minutes, does it mean the command is run every X minutes? and if you specify a hour AND minutes, the command is run every X hours for X minutes? so if i did */5 */2 * * * root /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb it would run that command every two hours for 5 minutes? so when two hours comes around, itll keep running that command over and over for 5 minutes? or will it run that command once every 5 minutes for two hours? im confused i just want to know the syntax to run something every 2 hours once .. can someone clarify this thanks -- robg robg.list@gmail.com