this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
34 points (92.5% liked)

Linux

6493 readers
761 users here now

A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system

Also check out:

Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Ategon@programming.dev
anzo@programming.dev
dwraf_of_ignorance@programming.dev
34
Working with systemd timers - Dmitry Kudryavtsev (yieldcode.blog)
submitted 2 days ago by maxint@programming.dev to c/linux@programming.dev
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] BlackEco@lemmy.blackeco.com 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Have you read the article? The fourth paragraph lists improvements systemd timers bring over cron:

Cron is easy, very simple and robust mechanism to execute periodic tasks on a *nix server, and is available by default on all popular Linux distributions. However, cron suffers from some issues:

  • If the system is down when the cron needs to run, the cron will be missed

  • There is no built-in status monitoring

  • There are no built-in logs

  • If you want to execute pre/post commands (for example by pinging an external service for success/failure) you have to do it inside the script itself

All of these issues are addressed with systemd services and timers, as the authors explains in details.