cron job timing

Question

I would like to start cron job at 9:30 and then work every 5 minutes and then stop at 16:30 everday. Is this kind of scheduling possible in one or do I have to need two cron jobs?

Answer 1

I think something along the lines of:

30/5 9-16 * * *  /usr/bin/script_to_run.sh

See the wiki page for details of timing syntax. I suggest testing this with a script that logs the time it runs at to a file.

#!/bin/bash

echo "Cron ran at: " `date` >> /var/log/crontimetest.log