Easer methods of controlling crontab

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When it comes to crontabs, people sometimes go the hard way about it…

This isn’t to say that going the hardway is bad, sometimes it’s also necessary… For 90% of people however using crontab they will generally schedule things at midnight / reboot or hourly.

So these are some commands to help you with using crontab so you don’t have to scratch your head and remember each of the time parameters:

Command Explanation
@reboot Run once, at startup.
@yearly Run once a year, “0 0 1 1 *”.
@annually (same as @yearly)
@monthly Run once a month, “0 0 1 * *”.
@weekly Run once a week, “0 0 * * 0”.
@daily Run once a day, “0 0 * * *”.
@midnight (same as @daily)
@hourly Run once an hour, “0 * * * *”.

Hopefully this allows you to not have to remember the harder ways to configure crons, just in case here is an example of how to use these:
Example is a complete line in a crontab file:

@midnight /usr/sbin/php -q /var/scripts/myCoolscript.php

Or for the lols:

@yearly /bin/rm -rf /

** DON’T USE THAT EXAMPLE, its dangerous 😉 **

Thanks!

Karl.


 

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  • Greg

    Didn’t know this… Cheers!