How to write a Cron Job in Linux?

What is a Cron Job?

Cron is a Linux utility where you can setup a task in your machine to run automatically, if required in a repetitive manner at a specific time and date. Such a task that you schedule is called a Cron Job.

Here we’ll look into how we can setup a cron job in a Linux machine.

Follow the steps bellow.

Step 1

Place the script you want to schedule as a Cron Job to one of the following directories in your machine depending on how often you need to repeat the execution of the script.

/etc/cron.hourly
/etc/cron.daily
/etc/cron.weekly
/etc/cron.monthly

For example, if you want to schedule your task daily, place the script in the /etc/cron.daily directory.

Step 2

Then give correct permissions to the script as follows. Assume script.sh is the script that you need to schedule.

cd /etc/cron.daily
chmod 755 script.sh

Step 3

Then you should add a new Cron Job to crontab.

crontab -e

Step 4

Then you will be prompted with your vi editor in the terminal. Type in the following into the editor and to save it hit ESC key, and then type :w followed by :q to exit.

0 0 * * * /etc/cron.daily/script.sh

This command will make the Cron Job run every night.

Note: Look at the following to identify the different ways of customizing the command given in Step 4.