Toolserver:Cron

Your crontab is a file that specifies a series of commands to be run at specified intervals. Cron uses that file to actually do this.

Using PUTTY or an alternative program, log in to your toolserver account. At the terminal, type  to open your crontab for editing. (This will create the file if it doesn't exist already.)

Save your crontab after editing with.

Syntax
3      2       *       *       0,6     /some/command/to/run 3      2       *       *       1-5     /another/command/to/run >/dev/null
 * 1) minute (0-59),
 * |     hour (0-23),
 * |     |       day of the month (1-31),
 * |     |       |       month of the year (1-12),
 * |     |       |       |       day of the week (0-6 with 0=Sunday).
 * |     |       |       |       |       commands

Be sure to end your file with a newline (\n). If you don't, you won't receive an error message, but nothing will happen at the scheduled time.

For information on syntax and formatting, see http://www.thesitewizard.com/general/set-cron-job.shtml.

An example which would run on the toolserver every hour would be

* */1 * * * /home/myusername/public_html/scripts/myscript.php

Output
Cron will email you every time a command runs. To avoid this, you can redirect output.

The  on the second command redirects normal output to nowhere. This will still email you error messages; you can avoid that by appending, which sends 2 (error messages) to the same place as 1 (normal messages). If you want those to go elsewhere, then specify that instead of, for example:

Shortcuts
string         meaning --         --- @yearly         Run once a year, "0 0 1 1 *". @annually      (same as @yearly) @monthly       Run once a month, "0 0 1 * *". @weekly        Run once a week, "0 0 * * 0". @daily         Run once a day, "0 0 * * *". @midnight      (same as @daily) @hourly        Run once an hour, "0 * * * *".

As well, you can do "every five minutes" using