This page will help you quickly and easily set up a cron job to run every hour between 3:00 am and 10:00 pm.
The Cron Job/Crontab
To have your task run at this frequency, use the following cron:
0 3-22 * * *
This cron command translates to the following (in Human-Readable format):
“Every hour between 3:00 am and 10:00 pm.”
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.
Each user has their own crontab file, and the commands in this file are only executed by that particular user. The file contains instructions for the cron daemon. To edit your crontab file, you can use the crontab command.
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 3:00 am and 10:00 pm“:
FUN FACT: Cron is one of the most powerful tools available on a Linux system – use it wisely!.
Use Cases
You might want to set up a crontab or cron job to run every hour between 3:00 am and 10:00 pm for several reasons, including:
- Scheduling a daily backup at 3:00 am
- Sending out a report of website analytics every hour at 4:00 pm
- Clearing the cache of a web server every day at 5:00 pm
Similar Cron Jobs
You might also want to run a crontab:
- every 5 hours
- every 3 hours
- every 10 hours
- every 1 hour
- every 9 hours
- every 11 hours at 10 minutes past the hour
- every 10 hours at 50 minutes past the hour
- every hour between 3:00 pm and 8:00 pm
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 3:00 am and 10:00 pm. 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.