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1.1 Cron

The document discusses how to use the Linux cron utility to schedule jobs to run on a recurring basis. It provides examples of crontab syntax for scheduling jobs to run at specific times, on certain days of the month or week, or within a range of hours each day. Key fields in the crontab format are described, such as minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week, and command. Examples are given for running jobs daily, twice daily, on weekdays only, or every 10 minutes. The document also shows how to view the crontab entries of the current or other users.

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335 views11 pages

1.1 Cron

The document discusses how to use the Linux cron utility to schedule jobs to run on a recurring basis. It provides examples of crontab syntax for scheduling jobs to run at specific times, on certain days of the month or week, or within a range of hours each day. Key fields in the crontab format are described, such as minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week, and command. Examples are given for running jobs daily, twice daily, on weekdays only, or every 10 minutes. The document also shows how to view the crontab entries of the current or other users.

Uploaded by

gidum2007
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Shikhar Verma 1

 Linux Cron utility is an effective way to schedule a routine background job at a


specific time and/or day on an on-going basis.

Linux Crontab Format

MIN HOUR DOM MON DOW CMD

Field Description Allowed Value


MIN Minute field 0 to 59
HOUR Hour field 0 to 23
DOM Day of Month 1-31
MON Month field 1-12
DOW Day Of Week 0-6
CMD Command Any command to be executed.

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 Linux Cron utility is an effective way to schedule a routine background job at a
specific time and/or day on an on-going basis.

Linux Crontab Format

MIN HOUR DOM MON DOW CMD

Field Description Allowed Value


MIN Minute field 0 to 59
HOUR Hour field 0 to 23
DOM Day of Month 1-31
MON Month field 1-12
DOW Day Of Week 0-6
CMD Command Any command to be executed.

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1. Scheduling a Job For a Specific Time

The basic usage of cron is to execute a job in a specific time as shown below. This will execute
the Full backup shell script (full-backup) on 10th June 08:30 AM.

Please note that the time field uses 24 hours format. So, for 8 AM use 8, and for 8 PM use 20.

30 08 10 06 * /home/ramesh/full-backup

30 – 30th Minute
08 – 08 AM
10 – 10th Day
06 – 6th Month (June)
* – Every day of the week

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2. Schedule a Job For More Than One Instance (e.g. Twice a Day)

This example executes the specified incremental backup shell script (incremental-backup) at
11:00 and 16:00 on every day. The comma separated value in a field specifies that the
command needs to be executed in all the mentioned time.

00 11,16 * * * /home/ramesh/bin/incremental-backup

00 – 0th Minute (Top of the hour)


11,16 – 11 AM and 4 PM
* – Every day
* – Every month
* – Every day of the week

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3. Schedule a Job for Specific Range of Time (e.g. Only on Weekdays)

If you wanted a job to be scheduled for every hour with in a specific range of time then use the following.
Cron Job everyday during working hours

This example checks the status of the database everyday (including weekends) during the working hours
9 a.m – 6 p.m

00 09-18 * * * /home/ramesh/bin/check-db-status

00 – 0th Minute (Top of the hour)


09-18 – 9 am, 10 am,11 am, 12 am, 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, 4 pm, 5 pm, 6 pm
* – Every day
* – Every month
* – Every day of the week

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4. Cron Job every weekday during working hours

This example checks the status of the database every weekday (i.e excluding Sat and Sun)
during the working hours 9 a.m – 6 p.m.

00 09-18 * * 1-5 /home/ramesh/bin/check-db-status

00 – 0th Minute (Top of the hour)


09-18 – 9 am, 10 am,11 am, 12 am, 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, 4 pm, 5 pm, 6 pm
* – Every day
* – Every month
1-5 -Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu and Fri (Every Weekday)

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5. How to View Crontab Entries?

[email protected]$ crontab -l

[Note: This displays crontab of the current logged in user]

[email protected]# crontab -l

no crontab for root

root@dev-db# crontab -u sathiya -l


@monthly /home/sathiya/monthly-backup
00 09-18 * * * /home/sathiya/check-db-status

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6. Schedule a Job for Every Minute Using Cron.

Ideally you may not have a requirement to schedule a job every minute. But understanding
this example will will help you understand the other examples mentioned below in this article.

* * * * * CMD

The * means all the possible unit — i.e every minute of every hour through out the year. More
than using this * directly, you will find it very useful in the following cases.

When you specify */5 in minute field means every 5 minutes.


When you specify 0-10/2 in minute field mean every 2 minutes in the first 10 minute.
Thus the above convention can be used for all the other 4 fields.

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7. Schedule a Background Cron Job For Every 10 Minutes.

Use the following, if you want to check the disk space every 10 minutes.

*/10 * * * * /home/ramesh/check-disk-space

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END of this Course Module.

Thanks

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