Hi,

Im a complete newbie to Linux,so hope that somebody can help:
There is a .sh script that needs to run every couple of hours to restart a service that runs on our linux server.
It resides in the /jsmith/maintenance folder.

How do I schedule this to run daily every 4 hours?
Many thanks in advance

You would probably use something like crontab -e
(but without knowing the script its hard to give more detailed help).

# File: crontab-file. Execute your.sh every four hours.
* */4 * * * /jsmith/maintenance/your.sh

Hi there,
thanks !. I verified the vixie-cron-3.0.1-69 service was installed and running and found the crontab file. When I opened it in VI i found that there was already a line in there to run the .sh script that restarts the service i need to get restarted every 4 hours.
The problem was that the crontab file was readonly so I couldnt add another entry to it.
I was logged in as root and entered chmod u=rwx and was then able to modify the crontab file and save it with the additional line to restart the service one hour from now so i can test its worknig ok.
When i open the crontab file in VI now, i get the below message.
can you advise what I should do next ? I cant find the .swp file anywhere !

Found a swap file by the name ".crontab.swp"

owned by: root dated: Wed Sep 28 17:44:27 2005

file name: /etc/crontab

modified: YES

user name: root host name: radservbakup

process ID: 32021

While opening file "crontab"

Cdated: Wed Sep 28 18:18:53 2005

NEWER than swap file!


(1) Another program may be editing the same file.

If this is the case, be careful not to end up with two

different instances of the same file when making changes.

Quit, or continue with caution.


(2) An edit session for this file crashed.

If this is the case, use ":recover" or "vim -r crontab"

to recover the changes (see ":help recovery").

If you did this already, delete the swap file ".crontab.swp"

to avoid this message.


23;1H"crontab" 31L, 1202C