using crontab to schedule Perl Scripts
This may be a little off topic. I'd written a perl script to grap stock data from site and store them into a mySQL database. I needed to run it everyday that's why I use the crontab command, and set it as follows
0 5 * * * perl stock.pl
But it doesn't work. Can someone tell me what I did wrong?
Thanks in advance.
--Ben
Orpheus posted this at 18:34 — 20th August 2000.
They have: 568 posts
Joined: Nov 1999
Your syntax is right, i'm not sure when exactly you want the script to execute but that will run every morning at 5 am.
1 Minute
2 Hour
3 Day
4 Month
5 Day of the week
So if you want to execute a command every 5 minutes you would say "5 * * * * command"
Or at least I think thats it... It's been a while since I used cron.
Thats the only advice I can give you.
Mark Hensler posted this at 19:53 — 20th August 2000.
He has: 4,048 posts
Joined: Aug 2000
I've never used cron before (never heard of it either). Just curious...
Would 0 5 * * * be 5AM everyday? or every 5 hours?
Anonymous posted this at 20:17 — 20th August 2000.
They have: 5,633 posts
Joined: Jan 1970
Max,
Crontab uses a 24 hour clock (military time). So that would be 0500 or 5am.
Benliong,
I as well don’t see anything wrong with your syntax. But haven’t setup a job in close to a year. Maybe try contacting your host and make sure they allow jobs? I know with one of my clients hosts you can set jobs up but they never run.
http://ibgwww.colorado.edu/~lessem/psyc5112/usail/automation/cron.html basically describes the essentials of using cron jobs. I had another tutorial which was illustrated but it seems to have vanished.
Hope that helps..
123finder.com posted this at 22:48 — 20th August 2000.
They have: 60 posts
Joined: Aug 2000
Be sure to use the right path to your script & if it needs any parameters, pass them in.
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