UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi can any one help me out.
while running crontab , m getting error bad minute time..
how to resolve this error.
i created 1 txt file a.cron
mirrordir -vm \home\t \homet1
& i saved it.
then i created a crontab file ..with
crontab -e
& i added a line in it.
* 1 * * * \root\a.cron
& i save it.
when i run crontab a.cron
it comes up with error .. :1: bad mintue time
please help..thanks in advance

Start by giving us more information (OS and version... since I dont know much UNIx accepting backslash like that...)

---------- Post updated at 13:09 ---------- Previous update was at 12:57 ----------

OK
You didnt, You edited the existing one... And modified it...

And now you replaced your root crontab file by : a.cron

And what was the line in it already?

Not surprising you get that error message... but just one question :
How are you going to recover the original root crontab file with its contents, or was it just a test file?

Were you logged in as "root" or as a normal user?

If this is an operational system you will be advised to get your Systems Administrator to repair the problem.



Assuming this is a training course on an expendable test system we can continue.

If you were logged in as root you have attempted to replace your root crontab with a file called "a.cron". This failed.
However I would have expected the error message:
"crontab: error on previous line; unexpected character found in line."
Even with your error message I doubt if it changed the crontab.

The script called "a.cron" contains errors. As a minimum in unix all backslash (\) characters should be solidus characters (/) in pathnames. If you have not tested the script you should not put it into a cron.


After repairing the script. You probably just need to run "crontab -e" again and change each backslash (\) to solidus (/). This is because unix syntax for a path is different from Microsoft syntax for a path.