Linux › Section G · System configuration › Topic G.5
Recurring tasks with cron and timer units
Backups, log rotation, certificate renewal and clean-up jobs all need to run on a schedule without anyone present. Linux offers two mature tools for this, the classic cron daemon and systemd timer units, and you should be able to read and write both.
In this topic
- Two schedulers
- The five fields of a crontab line
- The day-of-month and day-of-week trap
- Managing crontabs
- Worked example: when does each line run next?
- Output, mail and the percent sign
- Timer units
- OnCalendar syntax
- Worked example: converting a cron job to a timer
- Choosing between them
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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