hi,
i want a cron job to be run at 00:10AM every 3 weeks on a saturday. in other words, every 3rd saturday. is that possible?

i have tried:

#min hour dom month dow ...
10 0 */21 * 6 ...

is that right? it doesn't seem to work. the most important thing is "on saturday (6), every 3 weeks (*/21)" everything else not important.

no, it's not a problem with absolute path or root privileges.

so, do i have to add this entry to crontab exactly on a saturday for the */21 and 6 to coincide? i was thinking, if i add that entry on, for example, a wednesday, then cron will see, "oh, it's wednesday, so i'm not running it." then exactly 21 days later, cron sees again, "oh, it's a wednesday, so i'm not running it." so the */21 and 6 are never both satisfied, so the job will never run.

in the mean time, i will test the above hypothesis: have to make the */21 and 6 coincide.

thanks.

Your command would, I believe, only run it any 21st of the month that falls on a saturday. The */21 field is "day of month", and is not sequential from month to month.

I would just run a script every saturday that decides if it's been 3 weeks. For example:
Not very nice, but it should work for your needs.

hmm, i thought "21" would mean the 21st of a month. i use the "*/" as suggessted by a tutorial somewhere. i tried using "*/2" for min and "*" for other things, then it does indeed run every 2 minutes.

i thought of this, but it will be the last resort

thanks.

Yes, well, technically */21 means "Every 21st day of the month", but given that such a range is 1-31 limits things greatly. It *might* try it on the 1st and 22nd, I'm not certain. The point is that its based on the date, not on the last running of the cronjob.

ic. i look at it again, and "*/3" means: out of all the values returned by *, use the 1st, the 4th, the 7th, ... values.

so, i guess i will just settle with running the cronjob:

at 00:10AM, on the first saturday, of every month.

this is what i come up with.

10 0 1-7 * 6 <user> <command>

the key points, again, are "1-7" and "6": the day of the month is between 1 and 7 inclusive, and the day of the week is saturday.

is that correct?

thanks.

That seems reasonable.

Unfortunately, that would run at 00:10 on the 1st through the 7th (1-7) of each month, plus every saturday (6).

I have an idea. Theoretically, the 3rd Saturday of the month can only fall between the 15th (if the 1st of the month is a Saturday) to the 21st (if the 1st of the month is a Sunday). So you could just create multiple entries that cover each possibility:

eg.

10 0 */15 * 6 ...
10 0 */16 * 6 ...
10 0 */17 * 6 ...
10 0 */18 * 6 ...
10 0 */19 * 6 ...
10 0 */20 * 6 ...
10 0 */21 * 6 ...

Thoughts?

Garry

First off, happy birthday major.tom!

Secondly, the OPs intent was for it to run every 3 weeks, not the 3rd saturday of every month. Your statements would be equivalent to a blanket:

Thanks, Matir.

I thought Berhanie mentioned that that syntax would execute everyday between the 15th and the 21st PLUS every Saturday.

You rightly point out that the original request was for "every 3rd Saturday". That said, your solution above (on closer inspection) would do the trick.

Cheers!

Garry

gosh, if that's true, then i find cron very counterintuitive (read sucky ).
my intuition is that the date/time columns are ANDed: (0hour) AND (10min) AND (dom is 1, 2, ..., or 7) AND (dow is saturday) AND (any month).

yea yea i just read more carefully, and "If both the dom and dow are specified, the command will be executed when either of the events happen." arghh

of course, it is possible and your wrote the solution ...

but you have to add it at saturday and without "6":
M.

Would the */21 method survive a reboot, or a restart of crond?

I think i would use 'at' instead.
It can check and run the command when i start up the computer if it was offline during the specified time.
And also it can mail me errors.
So if it's an importent task i would rather use 'at'