I am helping my friend to install a script which need cron, but his host doesn't provide ssh/telnet access, can anyone please tell me the best way to simulate cron?

There is not way to simulate cron that I know of. Why not talk (i.e. e-mail) the host and ask them about setting up a cron job for you. If it's doing something reasonable (like a database backup daily etc.) most of them are willing to install it for you.

You'd be supprised what you can get if you just ask nicely.

Frank

Try phpcron:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/phpcron/

frank,

my friend just asked the host, and the reply said that they can configure the cron for us, just need the 'approval' from their admin :)


uuallan,

well, i have tried phpcron, but can't get it to work... when i click "start daemon", it will give me an error saying "can't execute phpcron.php blah blah check your file permission blah blah"

even after i chmod it to 777, still same error...

Hi!
The phpcron error could be because of your status as user or nobody. You have to be root to execute a thing like restarting cron.
cron job is possilbe for individual users. Maybe to speedup the process you can create a cronjobs file and send to your server admin. He then just has to update the jobs... :)

Have a great day :)

regards
amar

thanks amar, got it

Another way to simulate cron is to use one of the web site monitor sites such as InternetSeer. These services visit your site at some sort of interval. InternetSeer says every hour (for their free service), but it's really "about every hour" - it's sort of variable.

These sites offer a variety of free and paid web site monitoring services which may suit your needs. I had it set up to "visit" my site by telling the service to "visit" a particular script that I wanted to have run every hour. It worked great.

I hope this helps.

There's a good cgi script to simulate cron here:
http://www.smartcgis.com/cron

I haven't tried it myself but I hope this is what you needed.