Please Share This Knowledge With Others!For those of you who do not know what Cron is, it is a scheduler that is used by UNIX and similar system admins to schedule jobs. This will allow the administrators to write the script for a job even before the job is executed and schedule it, reducing the workload and the pressure significantly. However, there has been a problem that is associated with the usage of Cron for system admins traditionally. People are finding it difficult to schedule the Crons exactly and they let the Cron control their activities rather than being the other way around. There have been a number of developments that give you some tips and tricks on scheduling jobs with Crons.
Remember You Are Controlling the Cron
If you have taken UNIX training classes and have experience in administering UNIX systems or servers, you will know the challenges associated with use of Crons. The first tip that you should remember is that you cannot let the Crons dictate the way you write your scripts. Rather, you should know how you can manipulate the timeline in the Cron to ensure that you get all the tasks scheduled with minimum fuss and coding on your part.
Understanding Traditional Fields
One of the challenges that you will face while using Crons is the understanding of the traditional fields. You should keep it simple and in a format that you can recollect easily. Keep in mind that the smallest time unit that you can use is the minute and it can be extended to as much as a month. You should also ensure that these fields have legitimate values and should not have conflicting values when the script is executed in a particular time frame.
Using Strings for Days
Many admins still use the format of numbering for the days. Monday or Sunday will be Day 1 according to the point of reference that you are using. The developments in Crons allow you to use strings like sun, mon, tue, wed, and so on. Using these parameters, you can instruct the crons to run as many times as you wish.
You will have to leverage to make the cron on a daily, monthly, weekly, or yearly basis depending on your need. So, the way you write the script for your Crons is crucial here. The second issue is that you should time it right. So, the script for the timeline should be air-tight and unambiguous. Only then can you use Crons to your advantage.
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