How To Install cron on Debian 9
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install cron on Debian 9.
What is cron
cron is:
The cron daemon is a background process that runs particular programs at particular times (for example, every minute, day, week, or month), as specified in a crontab. By default, users may also create crontabs of their own so that processes are run on their behalf.
Output from the commands is usually mailed to the system administrator (or to the user in question); you should probably install a mail system as well so that you can receive these messages.
This cron package does not provide any system maintenance tasks. Basic periodic maintenance tasks are provided by other packages, such as checksecurity.
There are three methods to install cron on Debian 9. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install cron Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install cron using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install cron
Install cron Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install cron using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install cron
Install cron Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install cron using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install cron
How To Uninstall cron on Debian 9
To uninstall only the cron package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove cron
Uninstall cron And Its Dependencies
To uninstall cron and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 9, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove cron
Remove cron Configurations and Data
To remove cron configuration and data from Debian 9 we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge cron
Remove cron configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove cron configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge cron
Dependencies
cron have the following dependencies:
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install cron package on Debian 9 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.