I would like to set up cron run at 4.30 am every five minutes for 3 hours so it would stop executing at 7.30, how to do it? would this work ??
*/5,30 4-7 * * * 2 Answers
You cannot specify time like you want on a single cron line
# 4.30 - 4.59 evry 5 mins 30-59/5 4 * * * # 5.00 - 6.55 evry 5 mins */5 5-6 * * * # 7.00 - 7.30 evry 5 mins 0-30/5 7 * * * OR add something like this to your cron
*/5 4-7 * * * [ "$(date +%H%M)" -gt 0429 -a "$(date +%H%M)" -lt 0731 ] && YourScriptHere # $( ) = means run command inside and get the results, same as backticks ` # be careful with date, because you can also set your computers time with it. # man date will give you list of %LETTER options to specifu # %H = hour, %M = minutes, # -gt = greater than, -lt lessthan -a = and, && = continue execution if previous command # did not return error. I did a test on my server with the following setup:
*/5,30 12-13 * * * /root/crontest > /var/log/crontest.log Where the script crontest looked like this:
echo "Running at:"`eval date +%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M` Here's the output:
Running at:2011-04-29-12:20 Running at:2011-04-29-12:25 Running at:2011-04-29-12:30 Running at:2011-04-29-12:35 Running at:2011-04-29-12:40 Running at:2011-04-29-12:45 Running at:2011-04-29-12:50 So basically the setup you have will run every 5 minutes between the hours you have specified. All the 30 does is say to run it every 30 minutes, which is already does due to the 5 every minute interval. So it won't restrict the cron from running just from 0 to 30 minutes and then 5 minutes each in that interval.
You might be able to solve it by restricting it like this:
*/5,0-30 12-13 * * * /root/crontest > /var/log/crontest.log Edit: This won't work either since the , means OR so it will still run every 5 minutes
If this doesn't work then you'll probably have to solve it by:
- Handling the 5 minute interval within your script
- Change the interval from 4:30 - 7:30 to 4:00 - 7:00.
