Some scripts or programs that you may wish to run on your website will require the addition of a scheduled task, or “cron job”, to function. For example, some bulletin board software may require a scheduled task to automatically archive old posts every night. You can add and manage these scheduled tasks from the OpenSourceHost control panel. You can access your OpenSourceHost control panel by clicking “Control Panel” from the My Products tab of the customer manager at https://my.opensourcehost.com.

Important Note: Scheduled tasks should only be added if required by your web software developer. Please do not schedule tasks that are not needed or occur more than 4 times an hour to prevent account suspension

To schedule a task:

1. On your Home page, click the Scheduled Tasks icon.
2. Select the system user account on whose behalf the task will be executed.
3. Click Add New Task.
4. Specify when to run your command.
   • Minute - enter the value from 0 to 59
   • Hour - enter the value from 0 to 23
   • Day of the Month - enter the value from 1 to 31
   • Month - enter the value from 1 to 12, or select the month from a drop-down box
   • Day of the Week - enter the value from 0 to 6 (0 for Sunday), or select the day of the week from a drop-down box

     You can schedule the time using the UNIX crontab entry format. In this format, you can

   • enter several values separated by commas. Two numbers separated by a hyphen mean an inclusive range. For example, to run a task on the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 20th of a month, type 4-6,20.
   • insert an asterisk to specify all values allowed for this field. For example, to run a task daily, type * in the Day of the Month text box.

     To schedule the task to run every Nth period, enter the combination */N, where N is the legal value for this field (minute, hour, day, month). For example, */15 in the Minute field schedules the task to start every 15 minutes.

     You can type the contracted names of months and days of the week, which are the first three letters: Aug, Jul, Mon, Sat, etc. However, the contracted names cannot be separated with commas or used together with numbers.

5. Specify which command to run. Type it into the Command input box.
6. Click OK.

To remove a scheduled task:

1. On your Home page, click Scheduled Tasks in the Hosting group.
2. Select the system user account on whose behalf the task is executed.
3. Select a check box to the left of the task that you want to unschedule.
4. Click Remove Selected.
5. Confirm removal and click OK.