Adding new cronjob

[Phoenix Down]

Hi all, just finished building my new Unraid box and wanted to set up Dynamic DNS. To do so, I just need to do a curl call to a REST endpoint periodically. My work environment is Linux so I'm knee deep in it everyday. So naturally, I started dropping down into the command line to add a line to the crontab. But then, I saw that some threads recommend adding .cron files into /boot/config/plugins/? I looked in the official docs and did not find any guidance on crons. What's wrong with just adding a new entry into root user's crontab?

[Squid]

7 minutes ago, Phoenix Down said:

What's wrong with just adding a new entry into root user's crontab?

It won't survive a reboot, unless you add the appropriate commands to /boot/config/go

 

 

[Phoenix Down]

9 minutes ago, Squid said:

It won't survive a reboot, unless you add the appropriate commands to /boot/config/go

My first Unraid forum reply, by the the infamous Squid no less!

 

Looks like /boot/config/go just runs a list of commands on startup, right? Are you saying I should write a small script to append my cron entries to the crontab and have that run on startup?

 

What about the /boot/config/plugins/dynamix option others have mentioned? I see a bunch of .cron files there already.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Phoenix Down

[Squid]

4 hours ago, Phoenix Down said:

What about the /boot/config/plugins/dynamix option others have mentioned?

Preferred

[itimpi]

5 hours ago, Phoenix Down said:

What about the /boot/config/plugins/dynamix option others have mentioned? I see a bunch of .cron files there alread

Don’t worry about the others.    Whatever is responsible for them will already be set up to re-establish them on a reboot.

[Phoenix Down]

Just to confirm, the recommended way to add new cronjobs is to piggyback on /boot/config/plugins/dynamix by adding your own .cron files there?

[Squid]

If you know what you're doing (and since you know what cron is and crontab etc), then yes.  For everyone else user scripts plugin is the way to go  (although it has further options like only run at array start that can't be done via cron)

 

And after you add it then

 

update_cron

[Phoenix Down]

1 hour ago, Squid said:

If you know what you're doing (and since you know what cron is and crontab etc), then yes.  For everyone else user scripts plugin is the way to go  (although it has further options like only run at array start that can't be done via cron)

 

And after you add it then

 

update_cron

Got it, thanks! I was about to ask about User Scripts next. 

 

So I run "update_cron" after I add a new .cron in /boot/config/plugins/dynamix? Do I need to run "update_cron" after after reboot, or just once?

[Squid]

2 minutes ago, Phoenix Down said:

just once

 

[Phoenix Down]

4 minutes ago, Squid said:

 

Great, thank you sir!