This page will help you quickly and easily set up a cron job to run every 12 hours at 50 minutes past the hour.
The Cron Job/Crontab
To have your task run at this frequency, use the following cron:
50 */12 * * *
This cron command translates to the following (in Human-Readable format):
“Every 12 hours at 50 minutes past the hour.”
What is a Cron Job & Crontab?
In computing, a cron job is a time-based task that is set to run at certain predetermined times or intervals. A cron job can be used to schedule anything from basic tasks like running backups to more complex tasks like sending out email alerts or syncing files between servers. Cron jobs are typically used for maintenance or administrative tasks that need to be performed on a regular basis.
A crontab is a file containing commands and instructions for the cron daemon to execute.
Cron Fields
Every cron job uses five fields. Here is an explanation of what each field does in this cron, which runs “every 12 hours at 50 minutes past the hour“:
FUN FACT: When configuring a cron job, you can specify the minute, hour, day of the month, month and day of the week when it should run – this gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of when your task will be performed automatically!.
Use Cases
You might want to set up a crontab or cron job to run every 12 hours at 50 minutes past the hour for several reasons, including:
- Automatically send a report to management every 12 hours
- Perform maintenance tasks on a database every 12 hours
- Run a backup of important files every 12 hours
Similar Cron Jobs
You might also want to run a crontab:
- every 10 hours
- every 6 hours
- every 3 hours
- every 2 hours
- every 4 hours
- every hour between 1:00 am and 5:00 am
- every hour between 2:00 pm and 9:00 pm
FUN FACT: When editing your crontab, it is important to use a text editor that supports Unix-style line endings (LF), as opposed to Windows-style line endings (CRLF)..
Wrapping Up
In this article, you learned how to set up a cron job that runs every 12 hours at 50 minutes past the hour. Please share this page with friends and colleagues if you find it useful.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to comment below.
If you are looking for cron jobs that run at certain minutes, hours, days, weekdays, or months, or if you are looking for miscellaneous cron jobs, then check out our relevant sections, or visit our crontab cheat sheet for a list of hundreds of popular cron jobs.