Question 1

What is a cron expression?

Accepted Answer

A cron expression is a string of 5 fields (minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week) that defines when a scheduled task (cron job) should run on Unix/Linux systems. The cron daemon reads these expressions and runs the associated command at the specified times.

Question 2

What does */ mean?

Accepted Answer

The / character defines a step. */5 in the minute field means 'every 5 minutes' (0, 5, 10, 15…). */2 in the hour field means 'every 2 hours'. You can also use ranges: 10-30/5 means every 5 minutes between minute 10 and 30.

Question 3

How do I run a job on weekdays only?

Accepted Answer

Put 1-5 in the day-of-week field. For example: '0 9 * * 1-5' runs at 9:00 AM every weekday (Monday through Friday). The day-of-week field uses 0=Sunday, 1=Monday … 6=Saturday, 7=Sunday.

Question 4

What are the @yearly, @monthly, etc. shortcuts?

Accepted Answer

@yearly (same as 0 0 1 1 *) runs once a year on Jan 1. @monthly runs on the 1st of each month. @weekly runs every Sunday midnight. @daily runs every midnight. @hourly runs at the start of every hour. @reboot runs once at system startup.

Position	Field	Allowed
1st	Minute	0–59
2nd	Hour	0–23
3rd	Day of month	1–31
4th	Month	1–12
5th	Day of week	0–7 (0,7=Sun)

*	Any value
,	List e.g. 1,3,5
-	Range e.g. 1-5
/	Step e.g. */5

Position	Field	Allowed
1st	Minute	0–59
2nd	Hour	0–23
3rd	Day of month	1–31
4th	Month	1–12
5th	Day of week	0–7 (0,7=Sun)

*	Any value
,	List e.g. 1,3,5
-	Range e.g. 1-5
/	Step e.g. */5

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