[automation] CRON job to run on the last day of the month

I need to create a CRON job that will run on the last day of every month. I will create it using cPanel.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks

Set up a cron job to run on the first day of the month. Then change the system's clock to be one day ahead.

Some cron implementations support the "L" flag to represent the last day of the month.

If you're lucky to be using one of those implementations, it's as simple as:

0 55 23 L * ?

That will run at 11:55 pm on the last day of every month.

http://www.quartz-scheduler.org/documentation/quartz-1.x/tutorials/crontrigger

For a safer method in a crontab based on @Indie solution (use absolute path to date + $() does not works on all crontab systems):

0 23 28-31 * * [ `/bin/date -d +1day +\%d` -eq 1 ] && myscript.sh

The last day of month can be 28-31 depending on what month it is (Feb, March etc). However in either of these cases, the next day is always 1st of next month. So we can use that to make sure we run some job always on the last day of a month using the code below:

0 8 28-31 * * [ "$(date +%d -d tomorrow)" = "01" ] && /your/script.sh

You can just connect all answers in one cron line and use only date command.

Just check the difference between day of the month which is today and will be tomorrow:

0 23 * * * root [ $(expr $(date +\%d -d '1 days') - $(date +\%d)  ) -le 0 ]  && echo true

If these difference is below 0 it means that we change the month and there is last day of the month.

There's a slightly shorter method that can be used similar to one of the ones above. That is:

[ $(date -d +1day +%d) -eq 1 ] && echo "last day of month"

Also, the crontab entry could be update to only check on the 28th to 31st as it's pointless running it the other days of the month. Which would give you:

0 23 28-31 * * [ $(date -d +1day +%d) -eq 1 ] && myscript.sh

Adapting paxdiablo's solution, I run on the 28th and 29th of February. The data from the 29th overwrites the 28th.

# min  hr  date     month          dow
  55   23  31     1,3,5,7,8,10,12   * /path/monthly_copy_data.sh
  55   23  30     4,6,9,11          * /path/monthly_copy_data.sh
  55   23  28,29  2                 * /path/monthly_copy_data.sh

For AWS Cloudwatch cron implementation (Scheduling Lambdas, etc..) this works:

55 23 L * ? *

Running at 11:55pm on the last day of each month.

What about this one, after Wikipedia?

55 23 L * * /full/path/to/command

#########################################################
# Memory Aid 
# environment    HOME=$HOME SHELL=$SHELL LOGNAME=$LOGNAME PATH=$PATH
#########################################################
#
# string         meaning
# ------         -------
# @reboot        Run once, at startup.
# @yearly        Run once a year, "0 0 1 1 *".
# @annually      (same as @yearly)
# @monthly       Run once a month, "0 0 1 * *".
# @weekly        Run once a week, "0 0 * * 0".
# @daily         Run once a day, "0 0 * * *".
# @midnight      (same as @daily)
# @hourly        Run once an hour, "0 * * * *".
#mm     hh      Mday    Mon     Dow     CMD # minute, hour, month-day month DayofW CMD
#........................................Minute of the hour
#|      .................................Hour in the day (0..23)
#|      |       .........................Day of month, 1..31 (mon,tue,wed)
#|      |       |       .................Month (1.12) Jan, Feb.. Dec
#|      |       |       |        ........day of the week 0-6  7==0
#|      |       |       |        |      |command to be executed
#V      V       V       V        V      V
*       *       28-31   *       *       [ `date -d +'1 day' +\%d` -eq 1 ] && echo "Tomorrow is the first today now is  `date`" >> ~/message
1       0       1       *       *       rm -f ~/message
*       *       28-31   *       *       [ `date -d +'1 day' +\%d` -eq 1 ] && echo "HOME=$HOME LOGNAME=$LOGNAME SHELL = $SHELL PATH=$PATH" 

55 23 28-31 * * echo "[ $(date -d +1day +%d) -eq 1 ] && my.sh" | /bin/bash 

You could set up a cron job to run on every day of the month, and have it run a shell script like the following. This script works out whether tomorrow's day number is less than today's (i.e. if tomorrow is a new month), and then does whatever you want.

TODAY=`date +%d`
TOMORROW=`date +%d -d "1 day"`

# See if tomorrow's day is less than today's
if [ $TOMORROW -lt $TODAY ]; then
echo "This is the last day of the month"
# Do stuff...
fi

What about this?

edit user's .bashprofile adding:

export LAST_DAY_OF_MONTH=$(cal | awk '!/^$/{ print $NF }' | tail -1)

Then add this entry to crontab:

mm hh * * 1-7 [[ $(date +'%d') -eq $LAST_DAY_OF_MONTH ]] && /absolutepath/myscript.sh

00 23 * * * [[ $(date +'%d') -eq $(cal | awk '!/^$/{ print $NF }' | tail -1) ]] && job

Check out a related question on the unix.com forum.