Automate Your Tasks - How to Set Up Cron Jobs in Linux

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Lets clarify what a cron job, cron, and crontab are

Cron job is a scheduled task which runs periodically on your system. It is useful for automation, whether for your website backend, system backup, or just a simple script which logs your running applications.

The terms crontab and cron are often used interchangeably, but they refer to different aspects of the same system:

• Cron is a time-based job scheduler in Unix-like operating systems. It allows users to run scripts or applications at scheduled times. The cron daemon (or service) runs in the background and checks the /etc/crontab file and the /etc/cron.d/ directory for schedules and tasks to execute. It also reads the crontab files created by users.
• Crontab refers to a configuration file where users can set up their scripts to run periodically on a given schedule. Each user has their own crontab file, which they can edit using the crontab -e command.

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Setting up your cron job

I assume you already have a script or application that you want to run. In the…