Cron
of the Cron - Daemon is a job control of Unix and/or. Unix well-behaved operating systems such as GNU/Linux, which can implement recurring tasks (cronjobs) at a certain time. The instructions which can be required are stored in a user table, the so-called crontab.
This table consists of 6 columns; the first 5 serves the date (minute, hour, day, month, weekday), all further indications up to the line-makeup than the instruction which can be required is understood. The individual columns are separated by blanks or tabulators.
Here an example table under Debian GNU/Linux:
SHELL=/bin/sh PATH=/usr/local/sbin: /usr/local/bin: /sbin: /bin: /usr/sbin: /usr/bin#M S T M W Instruction 5 * * * * /usr/bin/message.sh */5 * * * * /usr/bin/message.sh 59 23 * * 7 cp of /var/log/messages /log/backup/messages 0 0 * * * cp /var/log/syslog /log/backup/syslog
the first instruction (beginning with “5…”) is implemented after 5 minutes of each hour, second every 5 minutes (the incrementation through */Schrittweite indicated), the third once per week Sundays around 23:59 clock and the fourth daily around 00:00 clock. Cron offers still more functions, which can be seen with specified the down Web on the left of.
From safety aspects the Cron Daemon (crond) should be deactivated, if it is not necessarily needed. The Daemon runs with full administrator rights. If an unauthorized one (Cracker) should penetrate into a computer system, on which crond runs, safety gaps of this service can be used, in order to implement instructions on the system.
Frequently the Cron Daemon implements important programs for the maintenance of the system, like for example services for regular archiving and deletion of log files.
