William Park via Talk wrote on
2026-01-06 00:24:
> 1. For cron jobs, do you use
> - systemd timer/service, eg. job.timer, job.service, OR
> - traditional crontab from /etc/cron.daily/job, ... ?
As I said before, I mostly use cron due to muscle memory, but it
seems systemd timers have more useful features.
For example, "what is going to run next, when? Also, what has run,
how long ago, what were the results?"
One could use a tool like those from https://crontab.io/ if using
cron.
Or, systemctl list-timers (composing in HTML to get fixed-width
font):
NEXT LEFT
LAST PASSED UNIT
ACTIVATES
Wed 2026-01-07 02:57:19 PST 20min Tue 2026-01-06 03:20:10
PST 23h ago mdmonitor-oneshot.timer
mdmonitor-oneshot.service
Wed 2026-01-07 03:09:01 PST 32min Wed 2026-01-07 02:08:07
PST 28min ago fwupd-refresh.timer
fwupd-refresh.service
Wed 2026-01-07 06:00:42 PST 3h 24min Tue 2026-01-06 06:49:26
PST 19h ago apt-daily-upgrade.timer
apt-daily-upgrade.service
Wed 2026-01-07 07:33:28 PST 4h 56min Tue 2026-01-06 23:33:53
PST 3h 2min ago anacron.timer anacron.service
Wed 2026-01-07 08:40:15 PST 6h Tue 2026-01-06 20:25:58
PST 6h ago motd-news.timer motd-news.service
Wed 2026-01-07 09:32:23 PST 6h Tue 2026-01-06 21:30:04
PST 5h 6min ago apt-daily.timer apt-daily.service
Wed 2026-01-07 10:53:48 PST 8h Tue 2026-01-06 03:00:40
PST 23h ago plocate-updatedb.timer
plocate-updatedb.service
Wed 2026-01-07 13:35:58 PST 10h Tue 2026-01-06 15:54:19
PST 10h ago neon-apt-clean.timer
neon-apt-clean.service
Wed 2026-01-07 15:09:15 PST 12h Tue 2026-01-06 15:09:15
PST 11h ago update-notifier-download.timer
update-notifier-download.service
Wed 2026-01-07 15:19:12 PST 12h Tue 2026-01-06 15:19:12
PST 11h ago systemd-tmpfiles-clean.timer
systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service
Thu 2026-01-08 00:00:00 PST 21h Wed 2026-01-07 00:00:01
PST 2h 36min ago atop-rotate.timer
atop-rotate.service
Thu 2026-01-08 00:00:00 PST 21h Wed 2026-01-07 00:00:01
PST 2h 36min ago dpkg-db-backup.timer
dpkg-db-backup.service
Thu 2026-01-08 00:00:00 PST 21h Wed 2026-01-07 00:00:01
PST 2h 36min ago logrotate.timer logrotate.service
Thu 2026-01-08 02:05:33 PST 23h Wed 2026-01-07 00:19:48
PST 2h 16min ago man-db.timer man-db.service
Sun 2026-01-11 03:10:09 PST 4 days Sun 2026-01-04 03:10:27
PST 2 days ago e2scrub_all.timer
e2scrub_all.service
Mon 2026-01-12 01:25:04 PST 4 days Mon 2026-01-05 00:42:28
PST 2 days ago fstrim.timer fstrim.service
Sat 2026-01-17 17:22:39 PST 1 week 3 days Mon 2026-01-05 15:00:00
PST 1 day 11h ago update-notifier-motd.timer
update-notifier-motd.service
Sun 2026-02-01 09:08:25 PST 3 weeks 4 days Sun 2026-01-04 19:41:27
PST 2 days ago mdcheck_start.timer
mdcheck_start.service
18 timers listed.
Pass --all to see loaded but inactive timers, too.