diff --git a/roles/distgit/tasks/main.yml b/roles/distgit/tasks/main.yml
index 1ea8d0729a..cd7e838a33 100644
--- a/roles/distgit/tasks/main.yml
+++ b/roles/distgit/tasks/main.yml
@@ -217,8 +217,8 @@
   cron:
     name: "dumps the state of the repos in JSON"
     job: "repospanner --config /etc/pagure/repospanner-admin.yml admin repo list --json |  python -m json.tool > /srv/cache/extras/repoinfo.json"
-    hour: */2
-    minute: 5
+    hour: "*/2"
+    minute: "5"
     state: present
   when: env == "staging"
   tags: