Schedule Recurring Tasks With Cron on Your VPS

Cron is the classic Unix job scheduler: give it a schedule and a command, and it runs that command for you forever. Backups, log cleanup, hourly syncs, nightly reboots — anything you can put in a shell command, cron can put on a timer.

Edit your crontab

Each user has their own crontab. Run this as the user you want the job to run as:

crontab -e

The first time, you will be asked to pick an editor. nano is the easiest choice.

Cron schedule syntax

Each line has five time fields followed by the command to run:

*  *  *  *  *  command
│  │  │  │  │
│  │  │  │  └─ day of week (0-6, Sunday=0)
│  │  │  └──── month (1-12)
│  │  └─────── day of month (1-31)
│  └────────── hour (0-23)
└───────────── minute (0-59)

Example jobs

# Every day at 3:00 AM: back up the home directory
0 3 * * * tar czf /root/backup-$(date +\%F).tar.gz /home

# Every 15 minutes: ping a health check
*/15 * * * * curl -fsS https://example.com/health > /dev/null

# Every Sunday at 4:30 AM: clear old logs
30 4 * * 0 find /var/log -name "*.log" -mtime +30 -delete

# On reboot: start a script
@reboot /home/alice/scripts/startup.sh

When writing schedules by hand, crontab.guru is invaluable for double-checking.

List, view, and remove

# List current crontab
crontab -l

# Remove all cron jobs for the current user
crontab -r

Common pitfalls

Cron has a minimal PATH. Always use absolute paths (/usr/bin/python3, not just python3) or set PATH= at the top of your crontab.
Cron does not load your shell profile. Environment variables from ~/.bashrc are not available. Set them explicitly in the crontab or inside the script.
Output is emailed by default. On a VPS without mail configured, this fails silently. Redirect output to a log file so you can debug:
0 3 * * * /home/alice/backup.sh >> /var/log/backup.log 2>&1

Check that cron is running

sudo systemctl status cron

If it is stopped, start it and see systemd Services.

Get Started

Control Panel

Managing Your VPS

Guides

Account & Billing

FAQ & Support

Schedule Recurring Tasks With Cron on Your VPS

Edit your crontab

Cron schedule syntax

Example jobs

List, view, and remove

Common pitfalls

Check that cron is running

​Edit your crontab

​Cron schedule syntax

​Example jobs

​List, view, and remove

​Common pitfalls

​Check that cron is running

Edit your crontab

Cron schedule syntax

Example jobs

List, view, and remove

Common pitfalls

Check that cron is running