With these limitations, cron is an excellent solution for simple tasks that run at a specific time with regular intervals of at least 60 seconds. This makes cron unsuitable for incremental tasks. If a task fails, it won’t run again until the next scheduled time. Cron is designed to run at strictly specified times. So if the computer running cron crashes, the scheduled tasks won’t be executed, and the missed jobs will only be able to be run manually. Cron jobs can’t be distributed to multiple computers on a network. With cron, you won’t be able to repeat a job every 59 seconds or less. The shortest interval between jobs is 60 seconds.However, like any other program, cron has limitations you should consider before using it: While cron jobs are used mainly by system administrators, they can be beneficial for web developers too.įor instance, as a website administrator, you can set up one cron job to automatically backup your site every day at midnight, another to check for broken links every Monday at midnight, and a third to clear your site cache every Friday at noon. Because of their nature, cron jobs are great for computers that work 24/7, such as servers. With cron jobs, users can automate system maintenance, disk space monitoring, and schedule backups. Each can create a crontab file and write commands to perform jobs anytime they want. However, Unix-like operating systems support multiple admins. Only system administrators can edit the system crontab file. The default system cron table or crontab configuration file is /etc/crontab. In Windows, you might be familiar with background processes such as Services that work similarly to the cron daemon.Ī cron file is a simple text file that contains commands to run periodically at a specific time. Users can determine what kind of task they want to automate and when it should be executed.Ĭron is a daemon – a background process executing non-interactive jobs. Tasks scheduled in cron are called cron jobs. Cron is a utility program that lets users input commands for scheduling tasks repeatedly at a specific time.
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