How to setup Cron jobs

Question

I have a sql statement that I need to run at a specified schedule .I am doing this for the first time. Will some one guide me on how to do this. Any useful pointers in this regard would be really appreciated.

Answer 1

Do you have other tasks in cron?
I will assume not. You have to make sure you have permissions to do cronjobs.
If so, then just type crontab -e
From here you can use the following guideline to make your cronjob. Also source your .profile or whatever in your shell script.
Minute = Minute of the hour, 00 to 59. * Will indicate every minute (details later)
Hour = Hour of the day in 24-hour format, 00 to 23. * Will indicate every hour (details later)
Day = Day of the month, 1 to 31. * Will indicate every day (details later)
Month = Month of the year, 1 to 12. * Will indicate every month (details later)
Day = Day of the week, 3 chars - sun, mon, tue, or numeric (0=sun, 1=mon etc).... * Will indicate every day (details later)
Task = The command you want to execute
So if I had a shell script called runme.sh and in it it called my .profile (which sets my oracle_home and path etc) and it also called sqlplus and ran my script this is how I would set it up. Let's assume we want it to run 10 minutes after midnight every night.
10 0 * * * runme.sh
Let's assume you want a log, then it can look like this.
10 0 * * * runme.sh 1> path/filename.log 2> path/errorlog.err
If you wanted to just run it from Monday through Friday, then do this.
10 0 * * 1,2,3,4,5 runme.sh
Hope this helps.