This page will help you quickly and easily set up a cron job to run every hour between 2:00 am and 3:00 am.
The Cron Job/Crontab
To have your task run at this frequency, use the following cron:
0 2-3 * * *
This cron command translates to the following (in Human-Readable format):
“Every hour between 2:00 am and 3:00 am.”
What is a Cron Job & Crontab?
A cron job is a time-based task that is typically set up to run automatically at regular intervals. For example, a cron job might be used to send out a daily email report or to back up files every night.
A crontab is a text file containing a list of commands that are executed at specified times. The commands in the crontab are executed by the cron daemon, which runs in the background and checks for new entries every minute.
Cron Fields
Every cron job uses five fields. Here is an explanation of what each field does in this cron, which runs “every hour between 2:00 am and 3:00 am“:
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 hour between 2:00 am and 3:00 am for several reasons, including:
- To run a backup script
- To run a maintenance script
- To generate reports
Similar Cron Jobs
You might also want to run a crontab:
- every 4 hours
- every 10 hours
- every 3 hours
- every 12 hours
- every 2 hours
- every hour between 11:00 am and 5:00 pm
- every 5 hours at 20 minutes past the hour
- every 11 hours at 30 minutes past the hour
FUN FACT: If you want to see what commands are scheduled in your crontab, type: “crontab -l”.
Wrapping Up
In this article, you learned how to set up a cron job that runs every hour between 2:00 am and 3:00 am. 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.