this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2026
28 points (100.0% liked)
Linux
68337 readers
160 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You have two options that are most likely pre-installed: systemd-timer or cron
With systemd-timer you can run it as a user or as root. For your use case I would go with the user option for two reasons.
For systemd-timer you need two files the .timer and the .system file.
your-timer.timer
your-service.service
These two files go into ~/.config/systemd/user/. Then run systemctl --user daemon-reload and systemctl --user enable your-timer.timer --now. If you want the service to also run if you are not logged in run sudo loginctl enable-linger youruser.
For cron it is less work. Just run cron -e and put your command in there preceded by the time it is supposed to run. The timeformat should be explained at the top of the file. I also don't know if it will run if you are not logged in.
I'm looking at cron. I just made a cronjob:
0 6 * * * castget -c
Is that it to run every day at 6am?
Also because I just remembered and it might be relevant to you. If you shut your system down and it is not running at 6am the cron job will not run that day. With systemd-timer it would check if it missed it's run because the system was powered off and the run after boot the same day.
Got it. My system is always on so that's no issue. Appreciate the help.
Very interesting. I’m beginning to see why so many people are recommending systemd instead of cron.