Home / server / Questions / 304702
Accepted
John Magnolia
Asked: 2011-08-25 15:07:21 +0800 CST

What does the rm -rf recur do, when used in a cron?

  • 772

I have a basic understanding of cron jobs, but I came across a tutorial today which recommends adding:

30 3 * * * wget http://www.mywebsite.com/bamboodir/index.php/recur
31 3 * * * rm -rf recur

What does the rm -rf recur do?

linux debian cron

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It compensates for someone who doesn't know about the -O option for wget -- specifically, wget -O /dev/null.

    More specifically, the wget call in that crontab hits a URL (presumably to trigger some sort of server-side processing -- always a sign of an absolute idiot of a web application or hosting environment). Since wget downloads files, it will store the downloaded file named recur it in the current directory. Then, a minute later, another cronjob deletes the file that was created, for tidiness.

    • 9