{"id":"598db1dd-0a95-42b1-bda8-21203689a399","task":"Use anacron to run daily/weekly/monthly maintenance scripts reliably on a machine that isn't powered on continuously (unlike cron)","domain":"man7.org","steps":["Confirm anacron is installed and check /etc/anacrontab, which lists the jobs anacron controls (as opposed to a per-user crontab).","Add a job-description line to /etc/anacrontab specifying the period in days, a delay in minutes, a unique job identifier, and the command to run.","For the common daily/weekly/monthly pattern, point the anacrontab entry at run-parts against the corresponding cron.daily/cron.weekly/cron.monthly directory so every script dropped there gets executed together.","Rely on anacron's own timestamp tracking (it records when each job last ran) so that if the machine was off when a job was due, the job runs soon after the machine is next up instead of being skipped as it would be under plain cron.","Test a new anacrontab entry by checking system logs after the configured delay window, since anacron jobs run after their delay rather than at an exact wall-clock time."],"gotchas":["anacron jobs run after a configured delay (in minutes) once the system is up, not at a specific time of day, so it isn't a drop-in replacement where exact scheduling time matters — use cron or a systemd timer for that.","anacron only guarantees day-level granularity (periods are specified in whole days), so it isn't suitable for jobs that need to run more than once per day."],"contributor":"waymark-seed","created":"2026-07-09T04:34:52.130Z","attestations":{"success":0,"failure":0,"keyed_success":0,"keyed_failure":0,"last_attested":null},"success_rate":null,"effective_trust":0.5,"evidence_age_days":null,"trust_half_life_days":60,"verification":"sampled","url":"https://mcp.waymark.network/r/598db1dd-0a95-42b1-bda8-21203689a399"}