From: Ramon Casha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: Malta Linux User Group - general list <[email protected]>
To: Malta Linux User Group - general list <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [LINUX.ORG.MT] Crontab Creation
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 14:26:18 +0200
1. Create a shell script which updates your virus definitions. Test it
to make sure it works.
A Perl Script that performs the required operation exists, I ran it and it
works fine.
2. Check if you have a directory called /etc/cron.weekly. If you do,
then the easiest way to add a weekly job is to plonk the shell script
from #1 in that directory. There's also cron.monthly, cron.daily etc.
depending how frequent you want it.
The directories exist as specified. There is also cron.daily and cron.d
(what does the latter do?)
How do I plonk the script from #1 in that directory, and what is plonking?
that's all... unless you want more precise control:
I must be srewing something up because it doesn't seem that simple.
3. If you want more precise control, for instance specifying exactly
which day of the month or week you want it to run in, create a cron
entry. To do this, login as whichever user has permissions to update the
virus database (probably root), then type "crontab -e". If this is the
first time you're running it, it will create the crontab file. In this
file, add a single line:
0 8 * * * /usr/bin/update-viruses
In the above line, I'm assuming that the shell-script to update the
viruses is called /usr/bin/update-viruses. Change it to your
virus-updating script.
The first part consists of the minutes, hours, day-of-month, month and
day-of-week. So, in the above line I'm telling it to execute the script
at 8 am (minutes=0, hours=8) of any day, month or weekday. To make it
run only on the first of each month at midnight, do the following:
0 0 1 * * /usr/bin/update-viruses
...and to run at 8.30pm every saturday, do this:
30 20 * * 6 /usr/bin/update-viruses
Whatever you do, make sure you specify the first field (minutes) to some
value, or it will run every minute!
The above explanation I understood well. I have a question, do I have to
change the directory to the cron.weekly directory in the console if I want
to create a weekly operation?
Also, when I ran crontab -e (in the console as root) all I got was a screen
with ~ on all lines except the few at the bottom of the screen where I got
some details. I will try inputting the details you gave me again according
to what I need and want, but if you have seen this screen and now what I
have to do, it would be great if you told me exactly what to do. Thanks as
always, always of great help.
Regards,
Edric.
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