Crontab - combining times

Question

I want to have my script run every 23'th around (so 11 PM) and between 7-19 every 2 hours. In directadmin I use this:

23,7-19/2 however, in crontab it will be ran every minute. What syntax should I use? My complete line:

* 23,7-19/2 * * * /usr/local/bin/php script.php

Answer 1

The key point with CRON is that it will run when ever the current time matches the pattern specified. So with all those *s, a lot of times will match.

I can't make sense of what exact times you are trying to describe though, so I can't give you the exact config that would work.

Answer 2

0 7,9,11,13,15,17,19 23 * * /usr/local/bin/php script.php

will run the script exactly at every second full hour on every 23th between 7h and 19h. But I am not sure anymore this is what you want to do.

Another interpretation would be that you want to run it between 7h and 19h and at 23h, but daily. Then change it to

0 7,9,11,13,15,17,19,23 * * * /usr/local/bin/php script.php

The six fields of the crontab are

min hour dayofmonth month dayofweek  command