Crontab to run at two hours out of the day, but for one of those hours exclude certain days of the week

Question

I need to change the below schedule to exclude Tuesday and Thursday for only the 2nd hour.

0 2,20 * * *

I want to run a job everyday at 2 am and 8pm, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays exclude the 2 am job.

lazy way: 2 cron jobs? See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16717930/how-to-run-crontab-job-every-week-on-sunday — Dave S, Jun 06 '19 at 20:54

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 06 '19 at 20:58

0

I think all you need is

0 2,20 * * 1,3,4,6,7

the numbers at the end are the days of the week. O being Sunday.

answered Jun 06 '19 at 20:58

Ronnie Rocket

11
5

Sunday is either zero or seven; monday through saturday is always 1-6. Read the cron docs : "day of week 0-7 (0 or 7 is Sunday, or use names)" – parttimeturtle Jun 06 '19 at 21:34

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 06 '19 at 21:40

The easiest answer is going to be two separate entries in your crontab:

# .---------------- minute (0 - 59)
# |  .------------- hour (0 - 23)
# |  |  .---------- day of month (1 - 31)
# |  |  |  .------- month (1 - 12) OR jan,feb,mar,apr ...
# |  |  |  |  .---- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0 or 7) OR sun,mon,tue,wed,thu,fri,sat
# |  |  |  |  |
# *  *  *  *  * user-name  command to be executed

 * 2,20 *  *  0,1,3,5,6 root /path/to/command.sh
 *  20  *  *  2,4       root /path/to/command.sh

Make sure that command.sh isn't in an /etc/cron.* folder.

Thank you, I forgot I could have multiple entries. This solved it. — user2455582, Jun 07 '19 at 12:21

Crontab to run at two hours out of the day, but for one of those hours exclude certain days of the week

2 Answers2