Cron Jobs & Tasks

Cron jobs are scheduled commands that execute automatically inside a service's containers based on defined timing rules.

In Zerops, these jobs are configured in the run section of zerops.yml file under the crontab key.

Parameters

command

string, REQUIRED

The shell command to execute at the scheduled time. This can be any valid command.

timing

string, REQUIRED

The schedule for when the task should run, specified in standard cron format using five space-separated fields:

• Minute (0–59)
• Hour (0–23)
• Day of the month (1–31)
• Month (1–12)
• Day of the week (0–7; both 0 and 7 represent Sunday)

Examples

• "0 5 * * *" – Runs daily at 5:00 AM.
• "*/10 * * * *" – Runs every 10 minutes.

allContainers

boolean, REQUIRED

Options:

• true – Command runs on all containers.
• false – Command runs on only one container.

workingDir

string, REQUIRED

Specifies the directory where the command will be executed. If not set, it defaults to /var/www.

Example Configurations

Here’s a basic example of how to set up a cron job in your service's zerops.yml:

run: 
  crontab:
    - command: "date >> /var/log/cron.log"
      timing: "0 * * * *"

This configuration logs the current date to /var/log/cron.log every hour.

Running on Multiple Containers

By default, cron jobs run on a single container, even if multiple containers exist for the service. To execute a command across all containers, you can use the allContainers parameter:

run: 
  crontab:
    - command: "rm -rf /tmp/*"
      timing: "0 0 * * *"
      allContainers: true

This example removes temporary files from all containers every day at midnight.

Custom Working Directory

You can also specify a custom working directory for your commands using the workingDir parameter:

run: 
  crontab:
    - command: "php artisan schedule:run"
      timing: "* * * * *"
      workingDir: /var/www/html

In this case, the command runs every minute in the /var/www/html directory.

Multiple Cronjobs

It is possible to define multiple cron jobs as a YAML object list under the crontab key.

run:
  crontab:
    - command: ...
      ...
    - command: ...
      ...