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Configuration of Cron Jobs for Automatic Search Engine Submissions
by: Dirk Brockhausen

Cron is a mechanism for planning and scheduling batch jobs. Implemented on Unix systems,
you can use it to schedule automatic submission of URLs to search engines. This takes the
hassle out of regular and recurring submissions.

The daemon "crond" is started automatically on system boot up. It runs one check per minute
to see if there are any jobs to execute. The list of jobs to execute is created by the program
"crontab".

The following commands work from the assumption that you are either logged in by Telnet or
locally on your Unix system.

Entering the command "crontab -l" will display a list of current entries. By default, only entries
owned by the logged in User will be displayed.

Existing lists can be removed/deleted with command "crontab -r".

To create a new list, it is recommended to read the entries from a file using command
"crontab filename".

The following examples will show you the format of this file. The file itself is created with an
ASCII text editor.

Example:

0 12 * * * /usr/yourdomain/cgi-bin/subfrog.cgi cron_parm1.txt

This entry consists of six parameters. The first five parameters define the time schedule, whereas
the sixth parameter contains the command for executing the job. In our example above, this command
consists of:

- the full path and file name of the script - an argument

This latter argument defines the batch configuration for your submission program, e.g.
fantomas subFrog PRO™.

In fantomas subFrog™, this command can be transferred by "cut and pasted" from the list of
"Command line strings" displayed in the lower section of the "BATCH MODE CONFIGURATION EDITOR"
of the GUI.

Parameters defining the time schedule are:

minute(0-59)
hour(0-23)
day of month(1-31)
month(1-12)
day of week(0-6) 0 = Sun

Hence, the above sample entries: 0 12 * * *

can be translated as:

If Minute = 0 and Hour = 12, the script will be executed.

Because the last three scheduling parms are defined by wildcard character "*", the job will be executed every
day.

Scheduling Week Days
If you wish to run the script on Mondays only, the following entry will do the trick:

0 12 * * 1 /usr/yourdomain/cgi-bin/subfrog.cgi cron_parm1.txt

Scheduling Turn of Month
You can schedule the turn of the month in this manner:

0 0 1 * * /usr/yourdomain/cgi-bin/subfrog.cgi cron_parm1.txt

Configurations for Multiple Domains
If you are maintaining multiple domains, you can create
a separate job for each domain.

E.g. you may create a file named "crontabfilename.txt"
and enter the following command lines:

0 12 * * * /usr/yourdomain/cgi-bin/subfrog.cgi cron_parm1.txt
0 14 * * * /usr/yourdomain/cgi-bin/subfrog.cgi cron_parm1.txt
0 16 * * * /usr/yourdomain/cgi-bin/subfrog.cgi cron_parm1.txt

The respective argument "domain1.cron.txt" defines the
file containing the pertinent domain's batch
configuration.

Next, the command "crontab crontabfilename.txt" will
transmit this file to crontab.

Important
If you have crontab configured for prior jobs already, you must include them in the new file
"crontabfilename.txt" (example), as the command "crontab crontabfilename.txt" will override
all previous cron jobs owned by the specific user calling crontab.

For further explanations under Unix, you can select from the following commands:

man crontab
man 5 crontab
man cron

Find out more about fantomas subFrog PRO(TM) and
its features here: http://fantomaster.com/fasubfrog0.html

Dirk Brockhausen is the co-founder and principal of fantomaster.com Ltd. (UK) and fantomaster.com GmbH
(Belgium), a company specializing in webmasters software development, industrial-strength cloaking and
search engine positioning services. He holds a doctorate in physics and has worked as an SAP
consultant and software developer since 1994. He is also Technical Editor of fantomNews, a free newsletter
focusing on search engine optimization, available at http://fantomaster.com/fantomnews-sub.html

You can contact him at fntecheditor@fantomaster.com
(c) copyright 2001 by fantomaster.com