atom feed4 messages in org.freebsd.freebsd-questionscrontab : day-of-month support for la...
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Nicolas BlaisAug 28, 2005 5:53 pm 
Lowell GilbertAug 30, 2005 1:49 pm 
Kevin KinseyAug 30, 2005 3:17 pm 
Nicolas BlaisAug 30, 2005 9:02 pm 
Subject:crontab : day-of-month support for last-day-of-month
From:Nicolas Blais (nb_r@videotron.ca)
Date:Aug 30, 2005 9:02:13 pm
List:org.freebsd.freebsd-questions

On August 30, 2005 11:16 am, Kevin Kinsey wrote:

Nicolas Blais wrote:

Hi,

Does our crontab allow the use of "L" (as found on http://wiki.opensymphony.com/display/QRTZ1/CronTriggers+Tutorial?decorator =printable) in the day-of-month field which would allow for a job to run on a 31th or feb 28?

It would be useful for certain apps like /www/awstats to update their database on the last hour of the month since putting the cron job on the 1st of the month makes the software update in a new month and putting it on the 30th of the month might loose 1 day.

As Lowell noted, "last day" isn't an option currently. Any number of scripting languages, though, are capable of handling this.

Here was a solution we came up with, using PHP, a couple years ago:

http://www.daleco.biz/articles/page.php?story=20

I'm sure something like this, or better, would be possible with PERL, ruby, etc., or possibly even sh/bash, though I've not tried.

HTH,

Ok, well I'll try to make a patch for my side. I still believe that having the option is better that not having it at all, though I may be wrong.

Thanks for your replies! Nicolas.