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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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Path Info

Level
Clock icon Intermediate
Duration
Clock icon 15m
Last updated
Clock icon Aug 29, 2025

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Table of Contents

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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

  4. 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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