can someone explain crontab to me better?

[Tom Joyce]

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-cron.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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-- 
Thomas Joyce
tomjoyce at gmail.com
ceo at jafwebdesign.com