I have a radio script that I run at 5:00 that streams radio in the morning while I get around. I'd like to automate this to run at 5:00 AM M-F. Could I use cron for this-if so, how?

Create a crontab file like so (minus the # comments):
crontab -e # This will open your default text editor. Exapmle will assume vi
i #enter insert mode
0 5 * * 1-5 <cmdline> # where <cmdline> is the full path to the command to execute followed by what ever parameters it requires
<esc>:wq # exit edit mode, save and quit

This will save your crontab file. To view it, type "crontab -l". You can add as many cmdlines as you want.

A little explanation of the crontab file format (from the man 5 crontab pages):




Also, please note that all output of the executed command will appear in your email unless you pipe them to somewhere else. Ex:
0 5 * * 1-5 /usr/bin/play someaudio.wav >~/play.log 2>&1 # will play an audio file at 5:00am Monday through Friday, logging all output to a log file.

* * * * * /usr/games/fortune # send me an email every hour with my fortune

Hope this helps.

Great! Got it working now-I'll be waking up to my Streaming Clock Radio now. Thanks for the help!

I'm not too familiar with how to use vi, so I made a one line file called cron with the parameters you mentioned in pico. Then I moved it into the cron log using:

crontab cron

I then listed the cron job with crontab -l

crontab --help gives options

Cool.

As an extra bit of info, you can change the default editor to the editor of your choice by setting the edit variable.

Ex:

#For bash, add to ~/.bash_profile
set EDITOR=<path to pico>
export EDITOR

#for tcsh add to ~/.tcshrc
setenv EDITOR <path to pico>

Then (after a new login or resourcing of these files), whenever you type crontab -e, it will open in your favorite editor.

Have fun!