[Sussex] Regular scheduled jobs?

[Thomas Adam]

On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 07:01:46PM +0100, John D. wrote:
> bash-2.05b$ man 5 anacrontab No entry for anacrontab in section 5 of
> the manual 

Installing 'anacron' would probably help.

> So maybe I'm not looking at the same man pages ??? Though there seems
> to be entries for cron and crontab (which I don't understand).

anacron (as people have pointed out) is just a means of extending cron
to perform tasks when your machine may be turned off.  Of course,
there's nothing to say that using anacron in your situation is any
better than using vixie-cron (what you're reading about with "man
crontab").  To be perfectly honest, I'd go with vixie-cron for the
time-being, and see my very first reply to this thread for pointers.

> You are probably "spot on" Thomas, but I "fall over" immediately, as I
> wouldn't recognise a shell script, unless it walked up and tapped me
> on the shoulder! (rather like most things "linux").

But you have enough interest to ask what one is.  That's a start.  :)  A
shell script is (usually) a collection of commands denoted by the very
first line in the file, which will look like:

#!/bin/sh

or:

#!/bin/bash

You've seen and use examples of shell scripts everyday without realising
it, John.

> I did find a howto at
> http://www.unixgeeks.org/security/newbie/unix/cron-1.html for cron,
> but again, I get lost as soon as the "technoblurb" starts!

What is it you don't understand?

> Thanks for the pointer though, efforts toward my "linux education" are
> always very much appreciated!

Pleasure.

-- Thomas Adam

--  
"One of us is a cigar stand, and one of us is a lovely blue incandescent
guillotine" -- Stephen Malkmus, "Type Slowly" from "Brighten The Corners"