290
votes

I'm trying to figure out how to run a crontab job every week on Sunday. I think the following should work, but I'm not sure if I understand correctly. Is the following correct?

5 8 * * 6
10
The question is about 'sunday' but the answer accepted is about 'saturday'. ¿? - inigomedina
Use https://crontab.guru/ site to create any cron expression. - nbi

10 Answers

517
votes

Here is an explanation of the crontab format.

# 1. Entry: Minute when the process will be started [0-60]
# 2. Entry: Hour when the process will be started [0-23]
# 3. Entry: Day of the month when the process will be started [1-28/29/30/31]
# 4. Entry: Month of the year when the process will be started [1-12]
# 5. Entry: Weekday when the process will be started [0-6] [0 is Sunday]
#
# all x min = */x

So according to this your 5 8 * * 0 would run 8:05 every Sunday.

216
votes

To have a cron executed on Sunday you can use either of these:

5 8 * * 0
5 8 * * 7
5 8 * * Sun

Where 5 8 stands for the time of the day when this will happen: 8:05.

In general, if you want to execute something on Sunday, just make sure the 5th column contains either of 0, 7 or Sun. You had 6, so it was running on Saturday.

The format for cronjobs is:

 +---------------- minute (0 - 59)
 |  +------------- hour (0 - 23)
 |  |  +---------- day of month (1 - 31)
 |  |  |  +------- month (1 - 12)
 |  |  |  |  +---- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0 or 7)
 |  |  |  |  |
 *  *  *  *  *  command to be executed

You can always use crontab.guru as a editor to check your cron expressions.

43
votes

Following is the format of the crontab file.

{minute} {hour} {day-of-month} {month} {day-of-week} {user} {path-to-shell-script}

So, to run each sunday at midnight (Sunday is 0 usually, 7 in some rare cases) :

0 0 * * 0 root /path_to_command
5
votes

When specifying your cron values you'll need to make sure that your values fall within the ranges. For instance, some cron's use a 0-7 range for the day of week where both 0 and 7 represent Sunday. We do not(check below).

Seconds: 0-59
Minutes: 0-59
Hours: 0-23
Day of Month: 1-31
Months: 0-11
Day of Week: 0-6

reference: https://github.com/ncb000gt/node-cron

4
votes

I think you would like this interactive website, which often helps me build complex Crontab directives: https://crontab.guru/

3
votes

The crontab website gives the real time results display: https://crontab.guru/#5_8_*_*_0

enter image description here

2
votes

10 * * * Sun

Position 1 for minutes, allowed values are 1-60
position 2 for hours, allowed values are 1-24
position 3 for day of month ,allowed values are 1-31
position 4 for month ,allowed values are 1-12 
position 5 for day of week ,allowed values are 1-7 or and the day starts at Monday. 
2
votes

Cron job expression in a human-readable way crontab builder

1
votes

@weekly work better for me! example,add the fellowing crontab -e ,it will work in every sunday 0:00 AM @weekly /root/fd/databasebackup/week.sh >> ~/test.txt

0
votes
* * * * 0 

you can use above cron job to run on every week on sunday, but in addition on what time you want to run this job for that you can follow below concept :

* * * * *  Command_to_execute
- � � � -
| | | | |
| | | | +�� Day of week (0�6) (Sunday=0) or Sun, Mon, Tue,...
| | | +���- Month (1�12) or Jan, Feb,...
| | +����-� Day of month (1�31)
| +������� Hour (0�23)
+��������- Minute (0�59)