CRON statement to run every 3 minutes except on Monday morning 12am to 2am

Put this into the user crontab

*/3 * * * * [[ "$(date +\%a)" == "Mon" && $(date +\%H\%M) -ge 0000 && $(date +\%H\%M) -le 0200 ]] || /path/to/service_script

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Please note that in crontab the percent signs must be escaped with a backslash ("\%")

In the system crontab add the required username as the sixth field ("*/3 * * * * username [[ ... ...")

Instead of messing with a very complicated cron, you can do this:

if [ $(date +%u) = 1 ]                                       
 then 
      if [ $(date +%H) = 00 -o 01  ] 
      then
    
       echo do nothing
       fi

else
   echo my command to execute goes here
exit
fi

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First condition checks to see if it's Monday (1), next condition checks to see if it's between hour 00 or 01 (literally 12AM to 1:59AM), and does nothing but echos "do nothing"

Place the actual script / job cron is running every 3 min where you see "echo my command to execute goes here".

Then, you can use a very simple every 3 min in your cron.

@omarfarid,

you could turn your really fine solution into a perfect one by replacing "0,1" with "2-23", don't you think so?

The author requires the task not to run between 0:00 and 1:59!

Thank you for the correction :)

I am getting a error that both expressions are invalid in CRONMAKER.com.  I am also getting an error when I try saving the Cron string in our application, which uses Java quartz.  Is this a Cron syntax not supported by Java?

Thanks!