- Back up the files in the middle of the night.
- Download large files in the early morning when the system isn’t busy.
- Send yourself messages as reminders of meetings.
- Analyze system logs periodically and look for any abnormal activities.
at
command or the crontab
facility of Linux.
How to schedule one-time jobs in Linux
If you want to run one or more commands at a later time, you can use theat
command. The atd
daemon — a program designed to process jobs submitted with at
— runs your commands at the specified time and mails the output to you.
Before you try the at
command in Linux, you need to know that the following configuration files control which users can schedule tasks by using the at
command:
/etc/at.allow
contains the names of the users who may use theat
command to submit jobs./etc/at.deny
contains the names of users who are not allowed to use theat
command to submit jobs.
/etc/at.deny
file, any user can submit jobs by using the at
command. The default in Linux is an empty /etc/at.deny
file; when this default is in place, anyone can use the at
command. If you don’t want some users to use at
, simply list their usernames in the /etc/at.deny
file.To use at to schedule a one-time job in Linux for execution at
a later time, follow these steps:
- Run the
at
command with the date or time when you want your commands to be executed.When you press Enter, the
at>
prompt appears, as follows:at 21:30 at>
This method is the simplest way to indicate the time when you want to execute one or more commands; simply specify the time in a 24-hour format. In this case, you want to execute the commands at 9:30 tonight (or tomorrow, if it’s already past 9:30 p.m.). You can, however, specify the execution time in many ways. - At the
at>
prompt, type the commands you want to execute as though you were typing at the shell prompt. After each command, press Enter and continue with the next command. - When you finish entering the commands you want to execute, press Ctrl+D to indicate the end.
Here’s an example that shows how to execute the
ps
command at a future time:at> ps at> <EOT> job 1 at 2018-12-28 21:30
After you press Ctrl+D, theat
command responds with the<EOT>
message, a job number, and the date and time when the job will execute.
Command | When the Job Will Run |
at now | Immediately |
at now + 15 minutes | 15 minutes from the current time |
at now + 4 hours | 4 hours from the current time |
at now + 7 days | 7 days from the current time |
at noon | At noon today (or tomorrow, if it’s already past noon) |
at now next hour | Exactly 60 minutes from now |
at now next day | At the same time tomorrow |
at 17:00 tomorrow | At 5:00 p.m. tomorrow |
at 4:45pm | At 4:45 p.m. today (or tomorrow, if it’s already past 4:45 p.m.) |
at 3:00 Dec 28, 2018 | At 3:00 a.m. on December 28, 2018 |
atq
command. The output of this command looks similar to the following:
4 2018-12-28 03:00 a root 5 2018-10-26 21:57 a root 6 2018-10-26 16:45 a rootThe first field in each line shows the job number — the same number that the
at
command displays when you submit the job. The next field shows the year, month, day, and time of execution. The last field shows the jobs pending in the a
queue and the username.If you want to cancel a job, use the atrm
command to remove that job from the queue. When you’re removing a job with the atrm
command, refer to the job by its number, as follows:
atrm 4This command deletes job 4 scheduled for 3:00 a.m. on December 28, 2018.]
When a job executes, the output is mailed to you. Type mail at a terminal window to read your mail and to view the output from your jobs.
How to schedule recurring jobs in Linux
Althoughat
is good for running commands at a specific time, it’s not useful for running a program automatically at repeated intervals. You have to use crontab
to schedule such recurring jobs, such as if you want to back up your files to tape at midnight every evening.You schedule recurring jobs by placing job information in a file with a specific format and submitting this file with the crontab
command. The cron
daemon — crond
— checks the job information every minute and executes the recurring jobs at the specified times. Because the cron
daemon processes recurring jobs, such jobs are also referred to as cron jobs.
Any output from a cron
job is mailed to the user who submits the job. (In the submitted job-information file, you can specify a different recipient for the mailed output.)
Two configuration files control who can schedule cron
jobs in Linux by using crontab
:
/etc/cron.allow
contains the names of the users who are allowed to use thecrontab
command to submit jobs./etc/cron.deny
contains the names of users who are not allowed to use thecrontab
command to submit jobs.
/etc/cron.allow
file exists, only users listed in this file can schedule cron
jobs. If only the /etc/cron.deny
file exists, users listed in this file can’t schedule cron
jobs. If neither file exists, the default Linux setup enables any user to submit cron
jobs.To submit a cron
job in Linux, follow these steps:
- Prepare a shell script (or an executable program in any programming language) that can perform the recurring task you want to perform.
You can skip this step if you want to execute an existing program periodically.
- Prepare a text file with information about the times when you want the shell script or program (from Step 1) to execute; then submit this file by using
crontab
.You can submit several recurring jobs with a single file. Each line with timing information about a job has a standard format, with six fields. The first five fields specify when the job runs, and the sixth and subsequent fields constitute the command that runs. Here’s a line that executes the
myjob
shell script in a user’s home directory at 5 minutes past midnight each day:5 0 * * * $HOME/myjob
The table below shows the meaning of the first five fields. Note: An asterisk (*
) means all possible values for that field. Also, an entry in any of the first five fields can be a single number, a comma-separated list of numbers, a pair of numbers separated by a hyphen (indicating a range of numbers), or an asterisk.
Field Number | Meaning of Field | Acceptable Range of Values* | |
1 | Minute | 0–59 | |
2 | Hour of the day | 0–23 | |
3 | Day of the month | 0–31 | |
4 | Month | 1–12 (1 means January, 2 means February, and so on) or the names of months using the first three letters — Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec | |
5 | Day of the week | 0–6 (0 means Sunday, 1 means Monday, and so on) or the three-letter abbreviations of weekdays — Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat | |
If the text file jobinfo
(in the current directory) contains the job information, submit this information to crontab
with the following command:
crontab jobinfoThat’s it! You’re set with the
cron
job. From now on, the cron
job runs at regular intervals (as specified in the job-information file), and you receive mail messages with the output from the job.To verify that the job is indeed scheduled in Linux, type the following command:
crontab -lThe output of the
crontab -l
command shows the cron
jobs currently installed in your name. To remove your cron
jobs, type crontab -r.If you log in as root
, you can also set up, examine, and remove cron
jobs for any user. To set up cron
jobs for a user, use this command:
crontab _u <em>username filename</em>Here, username is the user for whom you install the
cron jobs
, and filename is the file that contains information about the jobs.Use the following form of the crontab
command to view the cron
jobs for a user:
crontab _u <em>username</em> -lTo remove a user’s
cron
jobs, use the following command:
crontab -u <em>username</em> -rNote: The
cron
daemon also executes the cron
jobs listed in the systemwide cron
job file /etc/crontab
. Here’s a typical /etc/crontab
file from a Linux system (type cat /etc/crontab to view the file):
SHELL=/bin/bash PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin MAILTO=root HOME=/ # run-parts 01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly 02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily 22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly 42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthlyThe first four lines set up several environment variables for the jobs listed in this file. The
MAILTO
environment variable specifies the user who receives the mail message with the output from the cron
jobs in this file.The line that begins with #
is a comment line. The four lines following the run-parts
comment execute the run-parts
shell script (located in the /usr/bin
directory) at various times with the name of a specific directory as argument. Each argument to run-parts
— /etc/cron.hourly
, /etc/cron.daily
, /etc/cron.weekly
, and /etc/cron.monthly
— is a directory. Essentially, run-parts
executes all scripts located in the directory that you provide as an argument.
The table below lists the directories where you can find these scripts and when they execute. You have to look at the scripts in these directories to know what executes at these intervals.
Script Directories for cron Jobs
Directory Name | Script Executes |
/etc/cron.hourly | Every hour |
/etc/cron.daily | Each day |
/etc/cron.weekly | Weekly |
/etc/cron.monthly | Once each month |