can someone explain crontab to me better?

[Benjamin Sobotta]

hi again

I'm not quite sure but I think your command

* */2   *   *   *   root    /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

would make it run every minute every second hour.

On Sunday 19 September 2004 17:55, Tom Joyce wrote:
> I believe that you would simply set 2 hours, as in:
>
> * */2   *   *   *   root    /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
>
> That would run the script in /usr/libexec/ called "locate.updatedb"
> every 2 hours, taking as long as it needs to.
>
> Please correct me if anyone knows more about it than I do.
> Thanks...
>
> On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 13:42:36 -0400, robg <robg.list at gmail.com> wrote:
> > hi,
> >
> > i am having a hard time understanding crontab after reading
> > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/configtuning-cr
> >on.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 at gmail.com
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