Cron : Setting multiple minutes

croncrontab

With cron, if I wanted to run a command every 5 mins it would be:

*/5 * * * * command

But what if I wanted to set a list of minutes specifically?

Like at 5 past, 18 mins past and 15 minutes too the hour? I'm guessing this:

5,18,45 * * * *

Best Answer

Yes, the solution you specified is correct.

0,5,55 * * * * command       # run the command at the top of the hour, at
                             # the 5 minute mark and at the 55 minute mark.

Related Solutions

Unix – How to list all cron jobs for all users

You would have to run this as root, but:

for user in $(cut -f1 -d: /etc/passwd); do crontab -u $user -l; done

will loop over each user name listing out their crontab. The crontabs are owned by the respective users so you won't be able to see another user's crontab w/o being them or root.

Edit if you want to know which user a crontab belongs to, use echo $user

for user in $(cut -f1 -d: /etc/passwd); do echo $user; crontab -u $user -l; done

Ruby-on-rails – A cron job for rails: best practices

I've used the extremely popular Whenever on projects that rely heavily on scheduled tasks, and it's great. It gives you a nice DSL to define your scheduled tasks instead of having to deal with crontab format. From the README:

Whenever is a Ruby gem that provides a clear syntax for writing and deploying cron jobs.

Example from the README:

every 3.hours do
  runner "MyModel.some_process"       
  rake "my:rake:task"                 
  command "/usr/bin/my_great_command"
end

every 1.day, :at => '4:30 am' do 
  runner "MyModel.task_to_run_at_four_thirty_in_the_morning"
end

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Unix – How to list all cron jobs for all users

Ruby-on-rails – A cron job for rails: best practices

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