Cron job every few minutes ??

[Markus Kolb]

andrew fries wrote on Sun, Dec 26, 2004 at 09:03:26 +1100:
> On Sun, 26 Dec 2004 08:44 am, Vincent Trouilliez wrote:
> > > just to see if it would start the command I put in  /etc/cron.daily
> >
> > I meant cron.hourly of course, still, doesn't work... :o(
> >
> >
> > Vince, needs a cron expert...
> 
> I'm no expert, but I believe the correct way to create cron entry is with 
> crontab command: 
> as user, run 'crontab -e' - this will launch some sort of text editor, 

You could do both ways.
crontab -e is for cronjobs of users.

You can put some executables or scripts in the directory structure
/etc/cron.{hourly,daily,weekly,monthly}/, too.
That is for system cronjobs.
But it must be executables.

In /etc/cron.d/ you can put files with entries like using crontab -e.
That is for system cronjobs, too.

So it depends on the purpose of the cronjob and the wishes of the admin
which possibility to use.

The possibilities are very dependend of the used Unix OS, its
available cron software and the implementation/configuration.

The file /etc/crontab and the user crontabs exist everywhere.
But the short forms like */d and directory parsing are not supported 
in every cron.

In Linux it seems to be a standard. Maybe you can find it in LSB I
don't remember.

Markus