NET 4000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9.3.8: Cron, The Delay
Document Summary
Some distributions use anacron along with cron to automate the running of tasks. The two services function in much the same way. The cron daemon assumes that the linux operating system will remain up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If a system is not powered on when a scheduled cron job should run, it is skipped. The anacron service compensates for times when the system is powered off. If a job is scheduled in anacron while the system is powered off, then the missed job will automatically run when the system comes back up. The period field specifies the recurrence interval in days. 30 means the task recurs every 30 days. @monthly means the task recurs once per calendar month. The delay field specifies the time (in minutes) that the anacron daemon should wait before executing a missed job after the system starts back up.
