Installing and Configuring Cron

April 30, 2026

system-administration gentoo

Lots of cron options exist.

emerge -av cronie
/etc/init.d/cronie start
rc-update add cronie default

Create the base file and edit.

crontab /etc/crontab
mkdir -p /root/.cache/
crontab -e

This is a test to write the date to /root/test every minute.

* * * * * date >> /root/test

Wait a few minutes then

cat /root/test
crontab -e # delete that line

Start cron

/etc/init.d/cronie start
rc-update add cronie default