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   JP Mens (jpmens@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Dec-2025 02:06:27 JST JP Mens

   I've been using cron(8) for donkeys' ages, but this morning I'm surprised.

   Machine was powered down since last Saturday (long story) and booted last night. I have a crontab(5) entry with day set to "*/2" and am surprised the job didn't run this morning: Dec 6th, I'd have thought */2 is even days only, but it seems it actually means "every second day of uptime". crontab(5) here doesn't really elaborate.

   Until this morning I had not given that further thought.

   Live and learn.

   • Embed this notice
     JP Mens (jpmens@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Dec-2025 02:06:26 JST JP Mens

     in reply to

     "The day‐of‐month can be given as $, in which case it matches the last day of the current month."

     #AdventuresWithCron #rtfm

   • Embed this notice
     JP Mens (jpmens@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Dec-2025 02:06:27 JST JP Mens

     in reply to

     also forever, I thought that would run only if a Sunday were the 1st or the 15th, but of course I thought that only b/c I didn't read the docs carefully enough: it *is* documented in crontab(5)

     #adventuresWithCron

     ✧✦Catherine✦✧ repeated this.