New blog post!
Backups are an easy task to put off but WOW do you feel the pain when a file is mistakenly deleted or a storage device fails!
I use a combination of ZFS tools + bash scripting + cron(8) to perform an automated daily backup of the contents of my home directory to the home server (both machines are running FreeBSD):
This video was helpful in getting me started on writing my own bash script to automate the process of creating ZFS snapshots and doing backups to my home server.
[Video starts at 9:45 where the scripting begins]...
The guy who decided AWS should have its own special cron syntax should be fired into the sun.
Running a cron with env from a .envrc (from direnv) is easy just:
cd /path/to/repo && direnv exec . program_to_run
Bon, #Nextcloud Desktop, ça m'a gonflé.
Zou, c'est parti pour reconfigurer #rclone en #cron ; ce sera plus fiable.
#Shaarli: Cron Expression Generator - Free online cron expression generator tool. Generate cron expressions by using human language. | Uptimia - Une page qui permet de créer une expression pour un cron à partir d'une phrase.
IA inside ? : https://www.uptimia.com/cron-expression-generator #cron #expression #ia
@iznogoud @thedarkener cron deserves a "50 years of loyal service" ribbon!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Merit_of_the_Federal_Republic_of_Germany
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:GER_Bundesverdienstkreuz_2b_BVK_50Jahre.svg
Happy 50th birthday, cron! Thanks for remembering all of our jobs for us 
I just learned, via a mutual, that cron, the job-scheduling command-line utility, is celebrating 50 years this month.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron
(In case anyone cares for this sort of thing on here.)
Ich bräuchte mal das inverse Tool zu chronic für den Einsatz mit systemd Timern: stdout und stderr eines soll immer gesammelt und per E-Mail versendet werden, quasi eine Entsprechung zu MAILTO für systemd. Jedes Mal das Command in ein Skript wrappen fühlt sich irgendwie nicht richtig an. Oder gibt's da schon eine elegante Lösung? #Linux #systemd #cron #chronic #linuxadmin
Automate Your Site Checks with Cron (and WPCron)
Want to monitor all your cron jobs on your WordPress site? You can do this, but it’s messy. Really messy.
TIL: how to disable cron for GitHub forks
Quick update to this post: no need to hardcode the repo owner name, which makes it easier to maintain projects across organisations.
https://hugovk.dev/blog/2023/til-how-to-disable-cron-for-github-forks/
Hay there fediverse. Do we have any #bash #cron experts that can help me figure out how to fix things?
TL;DR - I need to reference the `$USER` variable as a parameter in a shell script that forms part of a dynamic path in a backup routine (the location varies by host so trying to automate as much as possible). Running the script as a logged in user over SSH works perfectly but when I add a crontab entry under the same user to run the same script is fails to parse the `$USER` part so the destination is incorrect and it throws an error.
I should also note that if I specify the path manually in the script it also works, but then it's a pain to automate across different hosts so I'm trying to avoid that if possible.
I now been going round in circles trying to figure this out for a couple of days so it's time to ask for help.
In this episode, @scottkeckwarren discusses why backups are important and uses #rsync to create an automated backup using #cron.
https://www.phparch.com/2025/03/automated-backups-101-with-rsync/
I've had my #crontab setup for ages to execute `trash-empty 30` (from the #TrashCLI package) each day, but just realised it hasn't been working.
Running manually shows a confirmation prompt, so I assume that's the reason. Apparently trash-empty can detect when it's in interactive mode, but this appears to be buggy.
Thankfully there's an `-f` flag to force the command with no prompt, so changing my crontab to `trash-empty -f 30` hopefully works instead.
I forgot you can't just run a shell script with rsync calls via cron on macOS because of... security. I think my workaround will do though.
I write a shell script and then create an Automator application that calls the shell script. I then add a cron job to open the application.
I need to check if it runs when the screen is locked. I'm pretty sure it does but I will test again.
So I needed to run some periodic backup jobs, both for personal and professional needs. If were you ever tasked with such a request, you probably looked at cron. But cron has shortcoming: it does not survive power off events, it does not support any logs, and you can’t easily tell when, and if it was ran.
Meet systemd timers. A modern approach to running cron-like job-scheduling.
