Crontab

Introduction for crontab

The crontab is used to automate all types of tasks on Linux systems. You can run your job automatically and periodically by using crontab.

Set a job in crontab

Make sure that cron service is running. If not, start it with sudo service cron start.

Use crontab -e to open the job list. Add your new job with a new line:

* * * * * [command]
# {minute} {hour} {day} {month} {day of week} {your command}
# Use '*' to stand for 'any'
# Example:
#     0 0 * * 0 conda activate ex_env; python main.py
# means run "conda activate ex_env; python main.py" at 00:00 on every Sunday.

After that, you can use crontab -l to see all the jobs set in the list. And use sudo service cron status to see the running log.

Basic cron service commands

sudo service cron status  # show service log
sudo service cron start   # start the service 
sudo service cron stop
sudo service cron restart