Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi

I am running a cronjob on solaris every 2 minutes.
cron does not accept step values having the format:
*/2 * * * * <somescript2execute>

OR..........
do I have to go the long way
0,2,4,6,8,10,12....and so on <somescript2execute>


Any Guesses??

For every instance.

0,2,4,6,8,10,12.... is correct.

I have learnt that on some *nix systems the command
*/2 * * * * <somescript2execute>
OR
0-59/2 * * * * <somescript2execute>
works but here in case of solaris it does'nt.

Is there some other way of scheduling cron instead of writing 2,4,6,8,etc . in the cron file

You could just have it run every minute and inside the script have it exit if it's not the correct time. time/2=x - if x has a remainder don't run.

While still an effective work around, I would have thought that this method would generate a % of unwarrented overheads / processing.

Not having tried it before.

If a person decides that they don't want to enter in 00-58, then it's a solution. True, not a good one, but a solution.

Besides, after all this time, do we really care about the cpu cycles? Processors are SO much faster than when this was an issue. If we really wanted to not waste cpu cycles, then some 'Operating systems' wouldn't still be #1 or even used. Computers are suppose to make our lives easier, so why not let them?

Besides, I'm not good enough to re-write the cron for this one. And don't care to. *nix should be more standardized between each OS just for this reason. One simple idea ( the post for */2 ) but the rest don't pick it up. Just stupid - and a waste of people time which should be more valuable.