My experience of the #fediverse :

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@tagomago @PMFL "spray and pray" is my approach 😂 it will run every 12 hours so I'm eager to see what will happen tonight. I timed it so I can regain control of things... when my daughter is in school or when she's asleep 💁‍♀️

[stefan@gardenstate.social]

@_elena cronjobs are the best. all my bots depend on them! very reliable!

one thing that got me early on: any output from a script ran in a cronjob seems to be put in some log file. Left alone that log file can fill all the space in your system.

for reasons I don't fully understand this line fix that by stopping the logging:

MAILTO=""

[jan@social.dytrych.cloud]

@_elena @yunohost yes! Just go with it! Will help if you want! ;-)

[daj@gofer.social]

@stefan

I add the following at the end of the cron job

' > /dev/null 2>&1 '

Ignore the ' at start and end. Can't get my markdown to show as code

It captures ALL output from STDOUT and STDERR and sends it to /dev/null (that is, nowhere)

@_elena

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@daj @stefan thank you for the heads up! do I put that code on the same line as the cron job instructions?

[stefan@gardenstate.social]

@daj @_elena

for me the cronjob is a file I edit by calling "crontab -e" on my server.

so I then put MAILTO="" on it's own line.

What david is suggesting also sound good / better!

[daj@gofer.social]

@_elena

Yes, like this:

0 5 * * * bash ~/backups/backup.sh > /dev/null 2>&1

which runs mybackup at 5am each day.  You just need to be confident that your script has no errors, as you will never see them!  Or ensure your script outputs to a log of its own within the script

@stefan

[hwll@sunny.garden]

@_elena good luck! Just remember these 3 rules:

1. It matters which user you edit a crontab with (sudo crontab -e is not the same as just crontab)
2. The letters -l and -r are different 😑
3. Version or backup changes to your crontab with crontab > crontab.txt

[tagomago@mastodon.social]

@_elena @PMFL Sure, I just like it to see how it runs before I leave it chillin’ on its own 😁 Also, you’d save some time by not waiting 12 hours to see what happens.

It’s also nice to redirect its output to a file (command >> filename 2>&1) to log what it does while you’re testing it, cause jobs may go wrong for many reasons: permissions, environment...

[dianshuo@mstdn.io]

@_elena it’s fine! Just don’t pick 1am local.

[madalex@fosstodon.org]

@_elena Bon chance!

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@dianshuo I picked weekdays only: 9am local (kiddo in school) and 9pm local (kiddo asleep) 🤗

[dianshuo@mstdn.io]

@_elena I feel one of those is optimistic #parenting however :)

Anyway welcome to the world of scheduling.

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@dianshuo oooh she's only 5, so she's ALWAYS fast asleep at 9pm. The optimistic part would be about the morning because of random illnesses / bugs circulating at school 😅

[daj@gofer.social]

@stefan I'm intrigued what MAILTO in this context does.  I must dig deeper. Every day is a school day

[stefan@gardenstate.social]

@daj i found it on stackoverflow years ago and didn't investigate deeply. but has worked well for me!

[dataknightmare@mastodon.xyz]

@_elena
You'll love it, absolutely.
Also, you'll start wondering why TF one needs to be geeky root to have such tool and why "ordinary people" know nothing about it (and grep, and...)
Next up: shell scripting.
Go Elena, you rule!

#MySoCalledSudoLife #SelfHosting

[grosser_mensch@norden.social]

@_elena Cron is a life-saver. I also use it to automatically update the base system at night and post an image at a specific time to my Pixelfed server 😊

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@DataKnightmare grazie!

E sto ancora sorridendo dopo aver ascoltato il tuo podcast (l'episodio di Pasqua). Mi hai fatto morire quando hai chiamato il garante irlandese il "Labradoodle di Big Tech" 😆 Bravissimo! 🙌

[dataknightmare@mastodon.xyz]

@_elena
Grazie! *blush*