Managing Cron Jobs

Cron is a time-based job scheduler in Unix-like operating systems. You can use cron jobs to automate repetitive tasks.

Editing the Crontab

The easiest way to manage cron jobs for the current user is by editing the crontab file:

crontab -e

Cron Job Syntax

A cron job has five time-and-date fields, followed by the command to be run:

# ┌───────────── minute (0 - 59)
# │ ┌───────────── hour (0 - 23)
# │ │ ┌───────────── day of month (1 - 31)
# │ │ │ ┌───────────── month (1 - 12)
# │ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday to Saturday)
# │ │ │ │ │
# * * * * * command_to_execute

Example: Run a backup script every day at 3:30 AM:

30 3 * * * /path/to/your/backup-script.sh