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  3. Introduction to Bash Scripting

Exercise

Scheduling cronjobs with crontab

As the resident data scientist, you have been asked to automate part of a data processing pipeline. You will use one of the cronjob schedules created in a previous exercise.

You will use the built in crontab functionality of this workspace to schedule a data pipeline script, extract_data.sh to run at 30 minutes past 2am every day. Running early in the morning saves a great amount of cost by utilizing cheaper server power.

You will end up in the nano text editor where you save a file with ctrl + o (press enter) and exit with ctrl + x. Useful Nano documentation is here.

At any stage you can refresh your browser window and you will get a fresh workspace to try again if you accidentally make a mistake in the workspace.

Instructions 1/3

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  • 1
    • Verify there are no existing cronjobs by listing them.
  • 2
    • Use the edit command for crontab (select nano) then schedule extract_data.sh to run with Bash at 2:30am every day.
  • 3
    • Verify the cronjob has been scheduled in the crontab by listing all current scheduled cronjobs.