Introduction to cron jobs
The ability to schedule tasks on an operating system is a vitally important feature that can improve the efficiency of the tasks being performed on the system and, consequently, the efficiency of the individuals responsible for managing and maintaining the system. This functionality may not be fully realized or appreciated in desktop operating systems that are typically geared toward regular end users, but in the case of Linux, where it is mostly deployed as a server operating system, the ability to automate and schedule certain repetitive tasks such as system backups is greatly appreciated and is widely implemented by system administrators and engineers.
Linux implements task scheduling through a utility called cron. Cron is a time-based service that runs applications, scripts, and other commands repeatedly on a specified schedule.
An application or script that has been configured to be run repeatedly with cron is known as a cron job. Cron can be used...
