runcron is a minimal cron alternative for automated and container-friendly environments.
It is designed to run as part of a process supervision tree rather than as a traditional always-on scheduler, so it executes a scheduled command, exits with the task’s status, and relies on the supervisor to restart it. The project focuses on safe task execution, including single-job supervision, runtime limits tied to the next schedule, retry handling for failed jobs, and cleanup of background subprocesses.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Supports standard crontab(5) expressions, with an optional seconds field.
- Includes aliases such as @reboot, @daily, @hourly, and exact-time variants such as =daily and =hourly.
- Supports randomized interval fields with the ~ syntax for spreading jobs across systems.
- Can use the hostname or a user-specified tag as the seed for deterministic pseudorandom scheduling.
- Forwards standard input to the scheduled subprocess.
- Provides options for lock-file location, working directory, timeout, retry interval, signal handling, dry runs, and printing the next scheduled interval.
- Can persist @reboot job state through a lock file.
- Includes mechanisms to terminate background subprocesses and help prevent unkillable setuid subprocesses.
Website: github.com/msantos/runcron
Support:
Developer: Michael Santos
License: ISC License
runcron is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Alternatives to cron | |
|---|---|
| cronie | Modern day version of cron and associated tools |
| fcron | Designed for systems which are not continuously running or regularly |
| systemd | Suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system |
| mcron | 100% compatible replacement for Vixie cron |
| anacron | Designed for systems which are not continuously running |
| Jobber | Run commands to a schedule |
| bcron | Designed with secure operations in mind |
| Cronicle | Multi-server task scheduler and runner |
| Supercronic | Crontab-compatible job runner designed for container environments |
| runcron | Minimal cron alternative for automated and container-friendly environments |
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |