Config and Setting up your crontab File.

Here you will learn how to config crontab file in your OS Linux system.

Cron

Cron is a process admin that running as a deamon process in background.
Cron can execute commands at specific times or in an interval of time (periods) for example, execute “hello world” every 5 minutes.

Cron in greek means time.

Crontab

Each user in linux systems have Crontab file stored in /etc/ directory.
Users enable to create their crontab file is specified in the cron.allow file and Users disable to create is specified in the cron.deny file.

Each line in crontab file is a CRON expression for example:

  SHELL=/bin/bash
  PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
  MAILTO=root
  HOME=/

  # run-parts
  
  .--------------- minute (0-59) 
  |  .------------ hour (0-23)
  |  |  .--------- day of month (1-31)
  |  |  |  .------ month (1-12) o jan,feb,mar,apr,may,jun,jul... (meses en inglés)
  |  |  |  |  .--- day of week (0-6) (sunday=0 ó 7) o sun,mon,tue,wed,thu,fri,sat 
  |  |  |  |  |
  *  *  *  *  *  command to execute
  01 *  *  *  *  root nice -n 19 run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
  50 0  *  *  *  root nice -n 19 run-parts /etc/cron.daily
  22 4  *  *  0  root nice -n 19 run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
  42 4  1  *  *  root nice -n 19 run-parts /etc/cron.monthly

Args for Crontab

• Specifies the crontab user file

  crontab [ -u usuario ] file
  

• Adding other commands to crontab

  crontab [ -u usuario ] { -l | -r | -e }
  

  • -u specifies user that we want to admin, only root user can use this.
  • -e edit the crontab file.
  • -l list the active crontab entries.
  • -r delete crontab.

Special commands for Crontab

• This commands abreviates text.

  @reboot  #Runs at boot
  @yearly  #Runs once a year   [0 0 1 1 *]
  @annually  #Runs once a year [0 0 1 1 *]
  @monthly  #Runs once a month [0 0 1 * *]
  @weekly  #Runs once a week   [0 0 * * 0]
  @daily  #Runs once a day     [0 0 * * *]
  @midnight  #Runs once a day  [0 0 * * *]
  @hourly  #Runs once an hour  [0 * * * *]
  

Examples

• In this example, you can programe a download every day at 21:30

  30 21 * * * cd /path/to/download/; wget http://example.com/file_to_download.extension
  

• Execute at boot (start mongod service):

  @reboot mongod -f /etc/mongod.conf &