All Cron Schedules
Cron Daily at Midnight
Run a job once every day at midnight using:
0 0 * * *
Runs at 00:00 (midnight) every day
Understanding the Expression
| Field | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Minute | 0 | At minute 0 |
| Hour | 0 | At hour 0 (midnight) |
| Day of month | * | Every day |
| Month | * | Every month |
| Day of week | * | Every day of the week |
Example Usage
Basic crontab entry
0 0 * * * /path/to/your/script.shDatabase backup at midnight
0 0 * * * pg_dump mydb > /backup/daily_$(date +\%Y\%m\%d).sqlWith monitoring
0 0 * * * /path/to/backup.sh && curl -fsS https://api.cronsignal.io/ping/YOUR_CHECK_IDCommon Use Cases
- Database backups: Full daily backups during low-traffic hours
- Log rotation: Archive yesterday's logs
- Report generation: Daily summary reports
- Data cleanup: Remove expired records
- Index rebuilding: Optimize database indexes
Variations
Daily at 2 AM (safer for backups)
0 2 * * *Running at 2 AM avoids the midnight rush and DST edge cases.
Daily at 6 AM
0 6 * * *Morning jobs, ready before the workday starts.
Daily at 5 PM
0 17 * * *End-of-day summary jobs.
Timezone Considerations
Important: "Midnight" means midnight in your server's timezone. If your server is in UTC but you want midnight EST, you need to account for the offset:
# Midnight EST (UTC-5) = 5:00 UTC
0 5 * * * /path/to/script.shSee our timezone troubleshooting guide for more details.
Monitoring Tips
For daily jobs, set your monitoring with:
- Schedule: Every 24 hours
- Grace period: 30-60 minutes (depending on job duration)
Daily jobs are critical but failures aren't noticed until the next day. Monitoring ensures you know immediately.
Never miss a daily job again
Daily jobs are easy to forget. Get alerted the moment one fails — not 24 hours later.
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