Cron job to run once a day is not working.

[bhupendra2895]

I created a cron job to delete all files in a temperory directory once a day at 13:00. But it is not working. Since I don't have any experience with cron jobs, there can be mistake. Please tell me what mistake I have done.
This is the format :-
(MINUTE HOUR DAY MONTH WEEKDAY COMMAND ACTIONS)
(00 13 * * * rm-R/home/bhupendr/public_html/temp/*)
I am on starka with free hosting plan. If it has anything to do with it.

[zapzack]

I created a cron job to delete all files in a temperory directory once a day at 13:00. But it is not working. Since I don't have any experience with cron jobs, there can be mistake. Please tell me what mistake I have done.
This is the format :-
(MINUTE HOUR DAY MONTH WEEKDAY COMMAND ACTIONS)
(00 13 * * * rm-R/home/bhupendr/public_html/temp/*)
I am on starka with free hosting plan. If it has anything to do with it.

change the command to

find /home/bhupendr/public_html/temp -exec rm -f {} \;

[misson]

How, exactly, is it not working? Is nothing deleted? Are some things not deleted? Are you getting any e-mailed output from the command?

Also try the command: rm -Rf /home/bhupendr/public_html/temp/*. The -f is to force deletion without asking for user input. Note also the space between the options and the path.

[dlukin]

shell commands work on cron jobs on x10?

[lemon-tree]

I was under the impression that you could only call PHP, Perl and a couple others. This would be a pretty easy thing to implement in PHP and would also allow for multiple things to run under one command too

[misson]

I was under the impression that you could only call PHP, Perl and a couple others.

That could very well be. However, I believe that rm is installed as a binary rather than a built-in shell command (it certainly isn't a bash built-in), and should thus be accessible (though the full path to the binary might need to be given). find is definitely a binary. I can't check right now, but I believe both binaries have global execute permission.

Cron doesn't have any blacklisting or whitelisting capabilities that I'm aware of, so it can't filter out certain binaries.

This would be a pretty easy thing to implement in PHP and would also allow for multiple things to run under one command too

Seconded. A script would be much more flexible.

[bhupendra2895]

@Mission Files didn't get deleted with old cron job.
@Zapzack I will try the command suggested with -f option , and see if it works.Otherwise I have to do it with Php.I will post the result here.

[bhupendra2895]

All commands posted above seems to be not working.I thought this can be problem with server time.So I ran date(r) and used 10 minutes ahead of that time to set cron job.But files are there.
How can execute Php script using cron and also where I can get tutorial for webmasters about using cron job.Thanks

[lemon-tree]

To execute a PHP cron job, enter this:

/usr/bin/php /home/YOUR_USERNAME/public_html/PATH_TO_FILE

In the PHP script you should then use readdir() to get the list of files in the selected directory and then use unlink() to delete each of those files.

[bhupendra2895]

Thanks lemon-tree, it should do the job.