Appendix / cron Service
The cron software is a useful service that schedules running programs on a regular frequency.
Introduction
The cron service software runs continuously,
checks a list of configured commands, and runs those commands when a time condition is met.
The Linux environment must support services.
See the cron documentation on Wikipedia.
cron on Linux
The cron service is typically enabled by default on full Linux systems
because cron is used to perform system tasks such as software updates.
Additional configuration may be required to enable cron or equivalent as described in the following sections.
Windows Scheduler
The Windows Scheduler is a service that runs on the Microsoft Windows operating system. See the Task Scheduler documentation.
The Windows scheduler may be an appropriate solution in some cases and is also required for certain configurations,
such as with the cron on Windows Subsystem for Linux.
cron on Windows Subsystem for Linux
The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) can be used to run Linux programs within Microsoft Windows.
See the WSL cron documentation.
cron on Cygwin
This section will be completed in the future.