This page will help you quickly and easily set up a cron job to run every 2 hours at 20 minutes past the hour.
The Cron Job/Crontab
To have your task run at this frequency, use the following cron:
20 */2 * * *
This cron command translates to the following (in Human-Readable format):
“Every 2 hours at 20 minutes past the hour.”
What is a Cron Job & Crontab?
A cron job is a task that is scheduled to run at a specific time or interval. Cron jobs are commonly used to automate system maintenance or administration tasks, such as running backups or sending email reports.
A crontab is a file that contains instructions for the cron daemon. The cron daemon is a program that runs in the background and executes tasks at specified times. A crontab file consists of a series of lines, each of which represents a task to be executed. Each line has five fields, separated by spaces or tabs.
Cron Fields
Every cron job uses five fields. Here is an explanation of what each field does in this cron, which runs “every 2 hours at 20 minutes past the hour“:
FUN FACT: If you want to edit your personal crontab, just type: “crontab -e” at the command prompt..
Use Cases
You might want to set up a crontab or cron job to run every 2 hours at 20 minutes past the hour for several reasons, including:
- A task which needs to run every two hours
- A task which needs to run at a specific time (20 minutes past the hour, every 2 hours)
Similar Cron Jobs
You might also want to run a crontab:
- every 10 hours
- every 9 hours
- every 12 hours
- every 11 hours
- every 7 hours
- every hour between 4:00 am and 2:00 pm
- every hour between 2:00 pm and 4:00 pm
- every hour between 3:00 pm and 5:00 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 2 hours at 20 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 cron job cheat sheet for a list of hundreds of popular cron jobs.