CLI for noobies on cron

[Larry Autry]

Clint Macdonald wrote:
> Friends:
> 
> Joe Barr has written another Command Line Interface for 
> Newbies article, this one on the uses (and abuses) of the 
> built-in alarm clock for Linux, cron:
> 
> "CLI for noobies: stay regular with cron and crontab"
> 
> <http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/04/04/1544250>
> 
> Personally, I have always thought that cron would be 
> tremendously useful, but have found the syntax very 
> confusing. Therefore, I am looking forward to learning 
> something from this article.

The only problem I have had with cron is that its PATH
environmental is minimal and may not include the directory 
of the executable script or program. The article is a good 
one, but does not address this issue. There is an easy workaround for this problem. Create a shell script that 
lives in a directory your cron environment knows about or 
use the full path of the script. Make certain that the PATH 
statement in the script includes the directory of your 
executable.


Larry Autry
larry.charter