crontab

M

MarionX

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I have an applescript Test.app in my home directory (OS 10.5.8). I want to use it to test the use of crontab. I have the following file (Mycrontab.rtf) in my home directory (mariondeckert). The file is as follows:

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/etc:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin
HOME=/var/log
#
#minute hour mday month wday command
#
*/5 * * * * /Users/mariondeckert/Test.app

When I try to activate it in terminal it says there is an error in the file.
I cannot find the error.

Marion
 
I'll have to agree with artov here -- you cannot use an RTF file to specify configuration settings for a crontab. The file must be a flat, plain-text file. TextEdit has the ability to convert RTF to plain-text in one of the menu options.

Also, what do you mean by "activate?" Typically, crontabs must be owned by root, and if that file exists in your home directory, it probably isn't owned by root (unless by activate you mean use that config file to create a new crontab entry -- if so, the problem is most definitely the RTF formatting). How much experience do you have with crontabs -- have you successfully set them up before on *nix-style machines, or is this your first foray into crontab world?
 
I have very little experience with cron. However, you can have a personal crontab, you need not be root to create crontabs. If you have a crontab file, Mycrontab, in your home (personal) directory you can go to terminal and enter the command "crontab Mycrontab" and OS will create a crontab for you in that directory. It works fine. My problem was the /5 command, OS 10.5.8 does not support it. I did not check thing out exhaustively, but I do not think the .rtf format was a problem - I did change it to .txt just in case.

MarionX
 
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