How to write a cron that will run a script every day at midnight?

Here's a good tutorial on what crontab is and how to use it on Ubuntu. Your crontab line will look something like this:

00 00 * * * ruby path/to/your/script.rb

(00 00 indicates midnight--0 minutes and 0 hours--and the *s mean every day of every month.)

Syntax: 
  mm hh dd mt wd  command

  mm minute 0-59
  hh hour 0-23
  dd day of month 1-31
  mt month 1-12
  wd day of week 0-7 (Sunday = 0 or 7)
  command: what you want to run
  all numeric values can be replaced by * which means all

Quick guide to setup a cron job

Create a new text file, example: mycronjobs.txt

For each daily job (00:00, 03:45), save the schedule lines in mycronjobs.txt 

00 00 * * * ruby path/to/your/script.rb
45 03 * * * path/to/your/script2.sh

Send the jobs to cron (everytime you run this, cron deletes what has been stored and updates with the new information in mycronjobs.txt)

crontab mycronjobs.txt

Extra Useful Information

See current cron jobs

crontab -l

Remove all cron jobs

crontab -r

Sometimes you'll need to specify PATH and GEM_PATH using crontab with rvm.

Like this:

# top of crontab file
PATH=/home/user_name/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.0/bin:/home/user_name/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.0@global/bin:/home/user_name/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.2.$
GEM_PATH=/home/user_name/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.0:/home/user_name/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.0@global

# jobs
00 00 * * * ruby path/to/your/script.rb
00 */4 * * * ruby path/to/your/script2.rb
00 8,12,22 * * * ruby path/to/your/script3.rb

from the man page

linux$ man -S 5 crontab

   cron(8) examines cron entries once every minute.

   The time and date fields are:

          field          allowed values
          -----          --------------
          minute         0-59
          hour           0-23
          day of month   1-31
          month          1-12 (or names, see below)
          day of week    0-7 (0 or 7 is Sun, or use names)
   ...
   # run five minutes after midnight, every day
   5 0 * * *       $HOME/bin/daily.job >> $HOME/tmp/out 2>&1
   ...

It is good to note the special "nicknames" that can be used (documented in the man page), particularly "@reboot" which has no time and date alternative.

   # Run once after reboot.
   @reboot         /usr/local/sbin/run_only_once_after_reboot.sh

You can also use this trick to run your cron job multiple times per minute.

   # Run every minute at 0, 20, and 40 second intervals
   * * * * *       sleep 00; /usr/local/sbin/run_3times_per_minute.sh
   * * * * *       sleep 20; /usr/local/sbin/run_3times_per_minute.sh
   * * * * *       sleep 40; /usr/local/sbin/run_3times_per_minute.sh

To add a cron job, you can do one of three things:

  1. add a command to a user's crontab, as shown above (and from the crontab, section 5, man page).

    • edit a user's crontab as root with crontab -e -u <username>
    • or edit the current user's crontab with just crontab -e
    • You can set the editor with the EDITOR environment variable
      • env EDITOR=nano crontab -e -u <username>
      • or set the value of EDITOR for your entire shell session
        1. export EDITOR=vim
        2. crontab -e
    • Make scripts executable with chmod a+x <file>


  1. create a script/program as a cron job, and add it to the system's anacron /etc/cron.*ly directories

    • anacron /etc/cron.*ly directories:
      • /etc/cron.daily
      • /etc/cron.hourly
      • /etc/cron.monthly
      • /etc/cron.weekly
    • as in:
      • /etc/cron.daily/script_runs_daily.sh
      • chmod a+x /etc/cron.daily/script_runs_daily.sh -- make it executable
    • See also the anacron man page: man anacron
    • Make scripts executable with chmod a+x <file>
    • When do these cron.*ly script run?
      • For RHEL/CentOS 5.x, they are configured in /etc/crontab or /etc/anacrontab to run at a set time
      • RHEL/CentOS 6.x+ and Fedora 17+ Linux systems only define this in /etc/anacrontab, and define cron.hourly in /etc/cron.d/0hourly


  1. Or, One can create system crontables in /etc/cron.d.

    • The previously described crontab syntax (with additionally providing a user to execute each job as) is put into a file, and the file is dropped into the /etc/cron.d directory.
    • These are easy to manage in system packaging (e.g. RPM packages), so may usually be application specific.
    • The syntax difference is that a user must be specified for the cron job after the time/date fields and before the command to execute.
    • The files added to /etc/cron.d do not need to be executable.
    • Here is an example job that is executed as the user someuser, and the use of /bin/bash as the shell is forced.


   File: /etc/cron.d/myapp-cron
   # use /bin/bash to run commands, no matter what /etc/passwd says
   SHELL=/bin/bash
   # Execute a nightly (11:00pm) cron job to scrub application records
   00 23 * * * someuser /opt/myapp/bin/scrubrecords.php

Tags:

Ubuntu

Cron

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