Creating a Cronjob to Run a Script Periodically

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Creating a Cronjob to Run a Script Periodically

Using `cron` jobs allow us to run processes according to a recurring schedule. We can set them to run at set times at regular intervals, to perform functions like backups, send emails, or most anything else we might want to do, which can be very useful for a System Administrator.

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Lab Info

Level

Intermediate

Last updated

Sep 19, 2025

Duration

15m

Challenge

Verify That the crond Service Is Enabled and Running
Ensure that crond.service is active and enabled:
```
systemctl status crond.service
```
If we see an active (running) status, then everything is good to go.
Challenge

Verify that /usr/local/bin/loadavg.sh is Executable for All and Produces Correct Output
Check permissions on /usr/local/bin/loadavg.sh:
```
ls -l /usr/local/bin/loadavg.sh
```
Make it executable:
```
chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/loadavg.sh
```
Run the script:
```
/usr/local/bin/loadavg.sh
```
Check to see if the script sent data to /var/log/loadavg.log:
```
cat /var/log/loadavg.log
```
We should see a timestamp and the three load averages in there.
Challenge

Create a cron Job that Executes /usr/local/bin/loadavg.sh Once per Minute During the Hours of 8AM-5PM on Monday through Friday
Use crontab -e to create the following content:
```
# Min   Hour    DoM     Month     DoW     Command
   *    8-17     *        *       1-5     /usr/local/bin/loadavg.sh
```
Save the cronjob and check our work:
```
crontab -l
```
Challenge

Verify Cronjob is Running and Producing Correct Output
Again, we could verify crond.service is running using systemctl. If we want to know whether our job is running or not, we can run tail /var/log/cron after a few minutes, and we should see entries in there for our loadavg.sh script. We should also take a look at the log that the script is writing to, with:
```
systemctl status crond.service
tail /var/log/cron
cat /var/log/loadavg.log
```
If the job is running, then we'll see contents like we did when we ran the script manually, once a minute.

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