Cron on My IT Journal

Cron Job Automation

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

🧪 Cron Job Automation Lab

📌 Objective

To build a scheduled automation script, observe its behavior, and learn how to debug failures.

⚙️ Part 1 - Script Setup

Create a working directory:

mkdir -p ~/cronlab
cd ~/cronlab

Create the script:

nano backup.sh

#!/bin/bash

DATE=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S")
LOG_FILE="$HOME/cronlab/backup.log"
SOURCE="$HOME"
BACKUP_DIR="$HOME/cronlab/backups"

exec >> "$LOG_FILE" 2>&1

echo "--- RUN $DATE ---"

mkdir -p "$BACKUP_DIR"

rsync -a --exclude="cronlab" \
"$SOURCE/" "$BACKUP_DIR/home-backup-$DATE/"

echo "Backup finished"