Cron Job Every 3 Months (Crontab)

This page will help you quickly and easily set up a cron job to run every 3 months.

The Cron Job/Crontab

To have your task run at this frequency, use the following cron:

0 0 1 */3 *

This cron command translates to the following (in Human-Readable format):

“Every 3 months.”

What is a Cron Job & Crontab?

A cron job is a scheduled task that is typically executed by the server in order to automate certain processes or tasks. For example, a cron job could be set up to automatically backup a database every night at 2am.

The crontab is a file that contains instructions for the cron daemon. The crontab is typically edited using 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 3 months“:

Field 1: (0) indicates that the task will be run at minute 0.

Field 2: (0) indicates that the task will be run at hour 0 (12 am).

Field 3: (1) indicates that the task will be run on day 1 of every month.

Field 4: (*/3) indicates that the task will be run every 3 months.

Field 5: (*) indicates that the task will be run every day of the week.

 

FUN FACT: A common use for cron jobs is to generate periodic reports – for example, you could set up a cron job to automatically generate and send out a report on website traffic statistics every week..

Use Cases

You might want to set up a crontab or cron job to run every 3 months for several reasons, including:

• Staying up to date on new software releases
• Checking for updates to dependencies
• Rotating passwords
• Cleaning up temporary files

Similar Cron Jobs

You might also want to run a crontab:

• every 5 months
• every 3 months
• every 4 months
• every 6 months
• every 2 months on day 12 of the month
• every 2 months on day 15 of the month

FUN FACT: Cron jobs are used to schedule commands or scripts to run automatically at a specified time and date..

Wrapping Up

In this article, you learned how to set up a cron job that runs every 3 months. 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.