How to force a Cron Job to start ahead of time?

Question

I have just provided a way to let my users stop their Cron Task. The cron is set up to run every 5 minutes to make sure its up and running BUT I would like to be able to start the cron job manually if the user clicks the restart button.

Is there any way to force the cron to start as apposed to waiting for its next 5 minute cycle?

I am using PHP on CentOS.

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered May 14 '11 at 00:05

5

You could just run whatever's being run in cron for you. Or.. you could set cron to run the script every minute (a little better), but only run every 5 unless a flag file exists (which you created, and now remove).

answered May 14 '11 at 00:05

Steve Kehlet

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How would I change how often the cron runs? – webnoob May 14 '11 at 00:12
run "crontab -e", then change the first value from 5 to *. See [man crontab](http://www.manpagez.com/man/5/crontab/) – Steve Kehlet May 14 '11 at 00:18

How to force a Cron Job to start ahead of time?

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