How do you run a crontab in Cygwin on Windows

Question

Some cygwin commands are  exe files  so you can run them with the standard Windows Scheduler  but others don t have an  exe extension so can t be run from DOS  it seems like     For example I want updatedb to run nightly   How do I make cron work

User · Answer

hat tip http   linux subogero com 894 cron-on-cygwin   Start the cygwin-setup and add the    cron    package from the    Admin    category   We   ll run cron as a service by user SYSTEM  Poor SYSTEM therefore needs a home directory and a shell  The     etc passwd    file will define them     mkdir  root   chown SYSTEM root  root   mcedit  etc passwd SYSTEM           root  bin bash   The start the service     cron-config Do you want to remove or reinstall it  yes no  yes Do you want to install the cron daemon as a service   yes no  yes Enter the value of CYGWIN for the daemon      ntsec Do you want the cron daemon to run as yourself   yes no  no Do you want to start the cron daemon as a service now   yes no  yes   Local users can now define their scheduled tasks like this  crontab will start your favourite editor      crontab -e    edit your user specific cron-table HOME  home foo PATH  usr local bin  usr bin  bin  PATH   testing - one per line             touch   cron  reboot       foo sh 45 11         lunch message to mates sh   Domain users  it does not work  Poor cron is unable to run scheduled tasks on behalf of domain users on the machine  But there is another way  cron also runs stuff found in the system level cron table in     etc crontab     So insert your suff there  so that SYSTEM does it on its own behalf     touch  etc crontab   chown SYSTEM  etc crontab   mcedit  etc crontab HOME  root PATH  usr local bin  usr bin  bin  PATH             SYSTEM touch   cron  reboot     SYSTEM rm -f  tmp  ssh    Finally a few words about crontab entries  They are either environment settings or scheduled commands  As seen above  on Cygwin it   s best to  create a usable PATH  Home dir and shell are normally taken from     etc passwd      As to the columns of scheduled commands see the manual page   If certain crontab entries do not run  the best diagnostic tool is this     cronevents

User · Answer

Getting updatedb to work in cron on Cygwin -- debugging steps 1  Make sure cron is installed   a  Type  cron  tab tab and look for completion help     You should see crontab exe  cron-config  etc   If not install cron using setup  2  Run cron-config   Be sure to read all the ways to diagnose cron  3  Run crontab -e  a  Create a test entry of something simple  e g                 echo  HOME  gt  gt   tmp mycron log  and save it  4  cat  tmp mycron log   Does it show cron environment variable HOME    every minute  5  Is HOME correct   By default mine was  home myusername  not what I wanted     So  I added the entry     HOME   cygdrive c documents and settings myusername   to crontab  6  Once assured the test entry works I moved on to  updatedb  by    adding an entry in crontab  7  Since updatedb is a script  errors of sed and find showed up in    my cron log file   In the error line  the absolute path of sed referenced    an old version of sed exe and not the one in  usr bin   I tried changing my    cron PATH environment variable but because it was so long crontab    considered the  otherwise valid  change to be an error   I tried an    explicit much-shorter PATH command  including what I thought were the essential    WINDOWS paths but my cron log file was empty   Eventually I left PATH alone and    replaced the old sed exe in the other path with sed exe from  usr bin     After that updatedb ran to completion   To reduce the number of    permission error lines I eventually ended up with this        Run updatedb at 2 10am once per day skipping Sat and Sun      10 2        1-5   usr bin updatedb --localpaths   cygdrive c  --prunepaths   cygdrive c WINDOWS    Notes  I ran cron-config several times throughout this process        to restart the cygwin cron daemon

User · Answer

I figured out how to get the Cygwin cron service running automatically when I logged on to Windows 7   Here s what worked for me   Using Notepad  create file C  cygwin bin Cygwin launch crontab service input txt with content no on the first line and yes on the second line  without the quotes    These are your two responses to prompts for cron-config   Create file C  cygwin Cygwin launch crontab service bat with content    echo off C  chdir C  cygwin bin bash  cron-config  lt  Cygwin launch crontab service input txt   Add a Shortcut to the following in the Windows Startup folder  Cygwin launch crontab service bat  See http   www sevenforums com tutorials 1401-startup-programs-change html if you need help on how to add to Startup   BTW  you can optionally add these in Startup if you would like   Cygwin  XWin Server  The first one executes  C  cygwin Cygwin bat   and the second one executes  C  cygwin bin run exe  usr bin bash exe -l -c  usr bin startxwin exe

User · Answer

You have two options     Install cron as a windows service  using cygrunsrv   cygrunsrv -I cron -p  usr sbin cron -a -n  net start cron      Note  in  very  old versions of cron you need to use -D instead of -n  The  non  exe  files are probably bash scripts  so you can run them via the windows scheduler by invoking bash to run the script  e g    C  cygwin bin bash exe -l -c    full-path to script sh

User · Answer

You need to also install cygrunsrv so you can set cron up as a windows service  then run cron-config   If you want the cron jobs to send email of any output you ll also need to install either exim or ssmtp  before running cron-config    See  usr share doc Cygwin cron-  README for more details   Regarding programs without a  exe extension  they are probably shell scripts of some type   If you look at the first line of the file you could see what program you need to use to run them  e g       bin sh    so you could perhaps execute them from the windows scheduler by calling the shell program  e g    C  cygwin bin sh exe -l  my cygwin path to prog

User · Answer

Just wanted to add that the options to cron seem to have changed   Need to pass -n rather than -D   cygrunsrv -I cron -p  usr sbin cron -a -n

User · Answer

The correct syntax to install cron in cygwin as Windows service is to pass -n as argument and not -D   cygrunsrv --install cron --path  usr sbin cron --args -n  -D returns usage error when starting cron in cygwin       cygrunsrv --install cron --path  usr sbin cron --args -D   cygrunsrv --start cron  cygrunsrv  Error starting a service  QueryServiceStatus  Win32 error 1062   The service has not been started    cat  var log cron log  cron  unknown option -- D  usage    usr sbin cron  -n   -x  ext sch proc parc load misc test bit       Below page has a good explanation   Installing  amp  Configuring the Cygwin Cron Service in Windows   https   www davidjnice com cygwin cron service html  P S  I had to run Cygwin64 Terminal on my Windows 10 PC as administrator in order to install cron as Windows service

User · Answer

Applied the instructions from this answer and it worked Just to point out a more copy paste like answer   because cygwin installation procedure is kind of anti-copy-paste wise implemented   Click WinLogo button   type cmd exe   right click it   choose  Start As Administrator   In cmd prompt    cd  lt directory where i forgot the setup-x86 64 exe gt  cygwin installer   set package name cygrunsrv cron  setup-x86 64 exe -n -q -s http   cygwin mirror constant com -P  package name    Ensure the installer does not throw any errors in the prompt     If it has - you probably have some cygwin binaries running or you are not an Windows admin  or some freaky bug       Now in cmd promt    C  cygwin64 bin cygrunsrv exe -I cron -p  usr sbin cron -a -D      or whatever full file path you might have to the cygrunsrv exe and start the cron as windows service in the cmd prompt   net start cron   Now in bash terminal run       crontab -e   set up you cron entry an example bellow             sync my gdrive each 10th minute       10          home Yordan sync gdrive sh                  command to be executed       - - - - -                                - - - - day of week  0 - 6   Sunday 0               - - - - - month  1 - 12             - - - - - - day of month  1 - 31           - - - - - - - hour  0 - 23         --------------- minute

[windows] How do you run a crontab in Cygwin on Windows?

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