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user2191937
user2191937

Reputation: 103

Ubuntu Crontab Edit

My issue.

I need to remove session files that are stored on the server in the /tmp folder older than 2 days.

I've added this in crontab in terminal.

#!/bin/bash
find /tmp/sess_* -mtime +2 -exec rm {} \;

I save it out but keep getting bad minute error, can anyone help and let me know where I am going wrong.

Thanks.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 379

Answers (1)

4ae1e1
4ae1e1

Reputation: 7634

crontab does not accept a shebang (and the shebang is wrong anyway that's obviously just a Markdown problem which has been fixed). Try, for instance,

SHELL=/bin/bash

* * * * * find /tmp/sess_* -mtime +2 -exec rm {} \;

if you want to run the job every minute. See man 5 crontab for details.

Update:

Q: What does the * * * * * in the minimal crontab above mean?

A: Those five fields are date and time fields controlling when the job is executed.

According to man 5 crontab,

The time and date fields are:

         field          allowed values
         -----          --------------
         minute         0-59
         hour           0-23
         day of month   1-31
         month          1-12 (or names, see below)
         day of week    0-7 (0 or 7 is Sun, or use names)

So, here are some examples:

  • * * * * *: every minute;
  • 00 * * * *: the beginning of every hour;
  • 00 03 * * *: 3 a.m. every day;
  • 00 03 01 * *: 3 a.m. on the first day of every month;
  • 00 23 * * 0: 11 p.m. every Sunday;
  • 00 23 * * Sun: same as above;
  • */15 * * * *: every fifteen minutes.

You can get more examples and explanations by Googling things like "vixie cron tutorial".

Upvotes: 3

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