Is it possible to have cron job running on Amazon lightsail instance?

Question

I would like to set up periodic jobs on an Amazon Lightsail instance, but I can find no information on it - only for Amazon EC2.

Is it possible to issue cron jobs on a l

Answer 1

If you are using node.js, you can do this by adding a few lines to your crontab. First, open the crontab

crontab -e

Add these three lines at the end of the file. I'm assuming you are using forever.

PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/opt/bitnami/nodejs/bin:
@reboot cd /home/bitnami/**THISISYOURFOLDER** && /opt/bitnami/nodejs/bin/forever **NAMEOFYOURAPP.JS**
0 1 * * * sudo reboot

This will run your app that is in THISISYOURFOLDER when the system reboots. In addition, I'm setting it up to reboot at 1am everyday with this setting.

To test this, you can use

* * * * * cd /home/bitnami/**THISISYOURFOLDER** && touch myfile.txt

in your crontab. This needs to create myfile.txt in your target folder after a minute. If it doesn't you need to change your path setting. There is also a difference between

sudo crontab -e
crontab -e

Find time settings at https://crontab.guru/