Author: Andrew

I have been playing with general pi-hole, which lead me to nebula-sync.

In the YouTube video, Pi-hole Syncing… But Smarter…, the creator, Tim, is editing his “.env” file for nebula-sync, and the is a conversation about the CRON syntax, which got me interested, and finally, I was able to quickly summary it here:

CRON=*/* * * * *
* * * * *  command to execute
      ? ? ? ? ?
       ? ? ? ? ?
       ? ? ? ? ?
      ? ? ? ? ?????? day of week (0 - 7) (0 to 6 are Sunday to Saturday, or use names; 7 is Sunday, the same as 0)
       ? ? ? ??????????? month (1 - 12)
       ? ? ???????????????? day of month (1 - 31)
      ? ????????????????????? hour (0 - 23)
      ?????????????????????????? min (0 - 59)

In the context of cron jobs, which are used to schedule tasks in Unix-like operating systems, * * * * * represents a schedule that executes a command every minute.

Each asterisk corresponds to a specific time unit in the cron schedule:

1. First asterisk (*): Represents the minute (0-59). An asterisk here means “every minute.”
2. Second asterisk (*): Represents the hour (0-23). An asterisk here means “every hour.”
3. Third asterisk (*): Represents the day of the month (1-31). An asterisk here means “every day of the month.”
4. Fourth asterisk (*): Represents the month (1-12 or JAN-DEC). An asterisk here means “every month.”
5. Fifth asterisk (*): Represents the day of the week (0-7, where 0 and 7 are Sunday). An asterisk here means “every day of the week.”

Therefore, * * * * * translates to “run the associated command every minute of every hour of every day of every month and every day of the week.”

The real techno meat, is found over here.

– https://serverfault.com/questions/162388/what-does-five-asterisks-in-a-cron-file-mean

I hope this helps someone!

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