Hi all,
Hope someone can help, I am running lonks 2 on a Unix server and have successfully installed the reciprical link checker. I now have a lot of links though and when I run from the browser, it just times out every time. I read that you can schedule it to run from cron. Now this sounds like it might be what I need to do, but the problem is I don't know how! I'd like to schedule it to run weekly say on a Friday afternoon at 2pm. Please help. I do have telnet access, but I've never used it.

Thanks
Annii
PS (Having never done anything like this before I need an idiots guide!!)

Please check Bobsie's instructions on how to set up cron events.

=> http://goodstuff.orphanage.com/cron_instr.html

I hope it helps.

Thomas
http://links.japanref.com

Thanks Thomas, but the page you gave me is for building pages and I want to run recip.cgi also its for linux, will this work on Unix?
I know the principle are probabley the same, but as I said, I really haven't a clue about this stuff, so it would be really useful if you or anyone else could give me a step by step guide specifically for use with the recip mod.

Thanks again
Annii

Bobsie's instructions should give you a general idea. The same principles apply to setting up a cron event with recip.cgi. Add something like the following to your mycron.txt (of course you have to adapt the settings and the path):
Thomas
http://links.japanref.com

Well yes they give me a general idea....but like I said, I really am a total newbie at this and just to give you one example; I wouldn't know how to edit the schedule from a daily one to a weekly one.
I know that even with step by step instructions, I'm going to have to workout how to use Telnet!!! But I just don't feel confident enough to try to re-write this on my own.....can anyone help?

Annii,

there is really nothing you have to rewrite. As for re-scheduling your cron event: I am afraid I cannot be any clearer than Bobsie. I was a total newbie too when I was first confronted with Cron. I found his instructions very helpful.

Thomas
http://links.japanref.com

Ok Thomas you were right, I sat down with acup of coffee and a printed version of the instructions and thought about it. Anyway I've done what I think will work and got all the right signs from crontab -l
All I can do now is wait and see if it actually works....the bit that confuses me still is that in the instructions, it suggests naming the file as either build_links.sh or verify_links.sh now I am using this for the recip checker mod so I called the file recipr.sh will that work ok? could I have called it anything I wanted? the script that is being executed is recip.cgi

Thanks for your help and patience.

Annii

Glad you managed, Annii. I have to admit that I am not familiar with the recip checker mod, but renaming the .sh files should pose no problem. Tell us if it worked.

Thomas
http://links.japanref.com

The name of the SHELL file doesn't matter as LONG as you reference the proper SHELL file in your CRONTAB entry.

Regards,

Eliot Lee

OK,
Now I need some more help! It didn't work!
These are some things I've tried to do once it didn't work the right way, and they still don't work.

1 When I go to the Links 2 Admin Manager, the recip Mod has a link in the admin panel, 1 to run the script (recip.cgi) and 1 to run the report recip.html. And it states If Run from cron just view report. So going back to the instructions I used, it said to put the line
/home/path/web/cgi-bin/admin/recip.cgi > /home/path/web/cgi-bin/logs/recip.log
in the file I called recip.sh (oh yes and I did use the same name for the shell in mycron.txt Elliot thanks).
So, I thought, maybe I don't need the > /home/path/web/cgi-bin/logs/recip.log bit as recip.cgi already writes to recip.html when run. So I deleted it and tried again.

Anyway it still didn't work.

2 The other thing I did was as I have another instance of Links 2 running (smaller db and not timing out with the recip.cgi script as the other instance now is) I thought I'd try that too, running it at a different time. Now I don't know if this is right or not, but I just added a second line to mycron.txt pointing to another .sh file called recip2.sh when I type crontab -l in telnet, it lists both files. Anyway, neither instance worked.

Please help.

Thanks
Annii

Thanks Elliot, I did, but sadly it still doesn't work, if you have a minute could you read my last reply to Thomas which details the promlem and see if there is anything you can add?
Thanks

Annii