[Techtalk] Cron problem

[Dominik Schramm]

Hi, 

Lucky Lady <needlesschatter at yahoo.com> writes:

> [...]
> 0 23 1-5 * * /bin/cp-allfiles.sh>>/root/mycronlog. 
>
> It is my understanding that Monday through and
> including Friday evening at 11:30 pm the script will
> be run, and the output will be in mycronlog. This
> worked fine for a few days then stopped. Facts:

Let me guess, did it work at the beginning of March?
You entered 1-5 into the wrong field. A crontab is made up of the
following fields (in this order):

minutes hour dayofmonth month dayofweek command

So:
   0     23     1-5       *       *     asdf

means "at 23:00 every month on the 1st through 5th, no matter what the
weekday".

Judging from your description, this is what you meant:
minutes hour dayofmonth month dayofweek command
   0     23      *       *       1-5     asdf

meaning "at 23:00 every Monday through Friday, no matter what month
and day of month".

hope this helps,
dominik