Run every five minutes

Let's create another cron job that will run every five minutes. For example, you may want to create a cron job that checks the load average on your system every five minutes.

Run the command crontab -e to add a new cron job:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ crontab -e

Now add the following line and then save and exit:

*/5 * * * * uptime >> /home/elliot/load.txt

Finally, let's view the list of installed cron jobs to verify that the new cron job is scheduled:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ crontab -e 
crontab: installing new crontab 
elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ crontab -l
* * * * * echo "A minute has passed" >> /home/elliot/minutes.txt
*/5 * * * * uptime >> /home/elliot/load.txt

Now we can see there are two cron jobs installed for the user elliot.

Hang around for five or ten minutes and then check the contents of the file /home/elliot/load.txt. If you don't have a stopwatch, run the command sleep 300 and wait until it finishes:

elliot@ubuntu-linux...