[CentOS] Crontabs

Wed Jun 10 08:33:21 UTC 2009
Paul Bijnens <Paul.Bijnens at xplanation.com>

On 2009-06-10 10:08, James Bensley wrote:
> Hey list,
> 
> I have several crontabs set up to run at night and I'm not convinced
> they are running but of course, I'm not here to see for sure!
> The crontabs are like the following example;
> 
> 30 20 * * * sh /home/a_user/nightlyscrips/nightly_script_1 >
> /home/a_user/nightlyscripts/`date +%d-%m-%Y--%H-%M-%S`.log

Somewhere deeply hidden in "man 5 crontab", there is the paragraph:

   The "sixth" field [...] Percent-signs (%) in the command, unless escaped
   with backslash (\), will be changed into newline characters, and
   all data after the first % will be sent to the command as
   standard input.

-- 
Paul Bijnens, Xplanation Technology Services        Tel  +32 16 397.525
Interleuvenlaan 86, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUM          Fax  +32 16 397.552
***********************************************************************
* I think I've got the hang of it now:  exit, ^D, ^C, ^\, ^Z, ^Q, ^^, *
* quit, ZZ, :q, :q!, M-Z, ^X^C, logoff, logout, close, bye, /bye, ~., *
* stop, end, ^]c, +++ ATH, disconnect,  halt,  abort,  hangup,  KJOB, *
* ^X^X,  :D::D,  kill -9 1,  kill -1 $$,  shutdown,  init 0,  Alt-F4, *
* Alt-f-e, Ctrl-Alt-Del, Alt-SysRq-reisub, Stop-A, AltGr-NumLock, ... *
* ...  "Are you sure?"  ...   YES   ...   Phew ...   I'm out          *
***********************************************************************