Crontab Query

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I need to schedule a process/program every hour on the hour between 9am and 4pm on the 2nd through the 9th of each month except on Saturday and Sunday.  So, I tried this entry:

0 9-16 2-9 * 1-5 ./myprog.sh

Unfortunately it runs outside of the 2nd through the 9th and still runs on Sat. through Sun.

Is there a way to do this (outside the program itself)?

-Frank

4 thoughts on - Crontab Query

  • Perhaps

    0 9-16 * * 1-5 [[ $(date +%d) == 0[2-9] ]] && ./myprog.sh

    Please replace ./ with full path to myprog.sh

    jl

  • Hallo, doesn t it make more sense to start the script every hour and check all conditions in the script?
    Ralf

    Von meinem iPad gesendet

  • From the crontab(5) man page:

    Note: The day of a command’s execution can be specified in the follow‐
    ing two fields — ‘day of month’, and ‘day of week’. If both fields are
    restricted (i.e., do not contain the “*” character), the command will
    be run when either field matches the current time. For example,
    “30 4 1,15 * 5” would cause a command to be run at 4:30 am on the 1st
    and 15th of each month, plus every Friday.

    So it looks like it is going to run either time.

    A systemd timer might be able to be more exclusive, but parsing the
    ‘systemd.time’ man page makes my head hurt.

    —
    Jonathan Billings

  • I prefer to develop the script standalone. The date/time restriction can be added in crontab or a separate script that does the date/time validation and calls the standalone script.

    If the date/time checks are added to the script, I recommend adding an option to override the checks and forces execution of the script when needed.

    Jon

    —
    Jon H. LaBadie jcu@labadie.us