I have been having a pig of a problem with crontab updating on a regular basis. I use a perl script to update my dynamic IP to a DNS service and it has been setup to update hourly. Only problem is that more often than not it does not update... around 3 out of four times it doesn't, but that 1 time in four it does... drives me crazy. Here is the entry I am using in my crontab. * 0-23 * * * (cd /usr/bin ; ./gdipc.pl ) here is the complete crontab listing: SHELL=/bin/bash PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin MAILTO=root HOME=/ # run-parts 01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly 02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily 22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly 42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly #0 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23 * * * root /usr/bin/gdipc.pl * 0-23 * * * (cd /usr/bin ; ./gdipc.pl ) The commented out line was an earlier attempt that refused to work at all... the perl script kept reporting an error indicating the loss of a configuration file. The line at the bottom is the one that replaced it, the error went away, but updates don't occur on a regular basis.
Um, are you sure you want that to run once a *minute*?
Perhaps you have apmd running and active. Powering down would stop the updates. Otherwise, I know of no problems in using cron.