Job Scheduling with Cron

Name: Job Scheduling with Cron
Rating: 5.0 (24 reviews)

Automate recurring tasks with Job Schedulers

Created byMarco Parente

Last updated 4/2026

English

What you'll learn

Getting introduced to Job Scheduling topic
Learn about Cron. When it should be used, and when is preferable looking for another tool
Learn how to install and operate Cron
Address Cron main pitfalls: logging and and execution environment

Course content

1 section • 9 lectures • 38m total length

Welcome to the course2:32
Explore how to automate recurring tasks using cron and other schedulers, with practical Ubuntu setup, grammar, logging, and common pitfalls, taught by a dev with a decade of orchestration experience.
From tasks and processes to job scheduling6:27
Clarify the differences between jobs, tasks, and processes, and show how a job scheduler coordinates tasks across execution slots and resources for efficient multitasking.
Example of job schedulers and usage scenarios3:57
Explore cron and related schedulers such as bcron, anacron, fcron, systemd, and Windows Task Scheduler, and learn their time- or event-based use cases for backups, updates, and cleanup.
Cron introduction2:45
Schedule tasks with cron, a time-based job scheduler for Unix and Unix-like systems that automates maintenance tasks, backups, and periodic reports via the cron daemon, crontab, and cron jobs.
Cron installation and operation9:25
Cron grammar2:36
Explore cron grammar and the time fields: minute, hour, day of month, month, and day of week, using wildcards, lists, and ranges, with notes on zero-based weekdays and one-based months.
Cron logs and script output redirection3:56
Explore cron logs in /var/log/syslog with grep and understand how cron executes jobs every minute. Learn to redirect script output to a dedicated log file and manage permissions with chmod.
Cron and environment variables6:18
Explore how cron jobs run in a minimal environment, surface user environment variables by sourcing files within the script, and weigh the trade-offs of sourcing .profile or local files.
Closure and additional resources0:52
Wrap up the course on job scheduling with Cron, highlighting core concepts, easy installation, and basic usage, with a linked pdf of sources for deeper study.
Quiz

Requirements

Having a good practice with Linux environment. Defining a script, giving it proper rights, use super user mode, should not be an issue for you.

Description

Welcome!

This course is an introduction to Job Scheduling, and a presentation of Cron.

After describing the difference between tasks, jobs and processes, we will see some examples of free Job Schedulers, verifying the best scenario for their usage. We will also see the difference between Job Schedulers and Workflow Orchestrators.

I am combining theory and practice, sharing first-hand experience, gained in decades of experience working with Linux systems.

At the end of this course, you will be able not only to define cronjobs to automate the execution of your tasks, but you will have a good understanding of possible pitfalls affecting this tool, and how to address, or avoid them.

Anybody can follow this course, but to properly adopt these concepts you will need a good understanding of Linux basics, such as defining and running scripts, giving them rights, go in super user mode.

Here what you will find

- From tasks and processes to job scheduling: we will see main differences, and that sometimes concepts may overlap.

- Example of job schedulers and usage scenarios: a comparison between free schedulers.

- Cron introduction: what is crontab? and cronjob? what about crond?

- Cron installation and operation: ensuring our Cron is ready to run our jobs.

- Cron grammar: setting up the job to run when needed.

- Cron logs and script output redirection: to have the means to understand what is happened, and when.

- Cron and environment variables: ensure our scripts will find all what they need.

Extra content:

- Questions

- Cron commands sheet

- Sources and additional articles

Who this course is for:

For anybody who needs to automate recurring jobs/tasks