Paul Mayero

What is cron, crontab and cronjob?

Cron is a program that allows a task to be scheduled for execution at a specific time in a Linux system. This specific time could be a specified day, hour or minute as specified in a cron tab ( cron table).

A cron tab is a configuration file that specifies commands to run periodically on a given schedule .

A cron job is a scheduled command that is to run after a specified period. ( Pretty repetitive, right ?)

Where does a cron job run

A cron job runs in the home directory of the user who created it. For instance, say we have a script called cron_job.py and we have set it to run after every 1 minute. It will always be executed as if it is has been executed at $HOME as python3 cron_job.py.

However, if you want to run it in a folder that is located at $HOME called cron_folder . When setting the cron job, you have to cd into cron_folder then run the script. For this case when setting the cron job, the exact syntax will be cd cron_folder && python3 cron_job.py

How to see existing cron tabs

To see the cron tab associated with the user you are logged in as, on the terminal type out crontab -l and see the output. If there is nothing, do know there is no cron tab available.

PS; This entry assumes you are running a Linux instance

Adios, until next entry 🙂