How to schedule background jobs using crontab

The cron daemon is a great user tool to automate tasks that don't require human intervention. Users pre-specify jobs to run in the background at particular times, for example, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 2am.

To use cron, each user creates his own crontab ('cron table') file. The command to examine one's crontab file is crontab -l.

$ crontab -l
MAILTO=commandolinux@gmail.com
0 2 * * 1,3,5 /home/peter/backups/backupWP.sh 2>&1

The MAILTO line specifies the email address to which cron sends the output of command execution. Please refer to my earlier post on how to set up an SMTP server to forward your emails.

The second crontab line specifies that the backupWP.sh script should be executed at 2am every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The syntax may look complicated. Fortunately, you can use the on-line Crontab Generator to craft the crontab statements. If you want to learn the syntax, click here instead.

Create crontab

Your crontab file is initially empty. To create the file from scratch, run the crontab command and type in the crontab statements.

$ crontab

Alternatively, put the statements into a temporary file, say /tmp/cron, and run this command:

$ cat /tmp/cron | crontab -

Edit crontab

If you want to modify crontab contents after they are created, run this command:

$ crontab -e

The command opens the crontab file in your default text editor. It is the most versatile way to modify crontab. You can use it to create, modify, and delete crontab statements. Don't forget to save the file after you finish editing.

The downside for this edit command is the time and overhead of starting the text editor. You can append a new statement directly by using the command in the next section.

Add to crontab

When I was new to crontab, I made the mistake of trying to append a statement by running crontab without any argument. That actually replaced everything in the crontab file with the new input.

The correct command to append a new statement is:

$ (crontab -l; echo "30 04 * * 4 /home/peter/backups/report.sh 2>&1") | crontab -

The trick is to run 2 commands in a subshell grouped by the round brackets. The first command, crontab -l, fetches the existing crontab statements. The echo command echoes the new statement to be appended. The collective output from both commands are piped to crontab standard input.

Empty crontab

To erase all crontab contents, execute the following command:

$ crontab -r

Conclusion

You may use crontab to schedule regular maintenance and backup tasks. Once it is set up, the crontab file tends to be static. But, if you ever need to add another task, or change the scheduled times, the commands introduced in this post will come in handy.