Question

How do you create a cron job from the command line, so that it shows up with a name in gnome-schedule?

I know how to create a cron job using crontab. However, all my jobs show up with a blank name. I’d like to better document my jobs so I can easily identify them in gnome-schedule, or similar cron wrapper.

Answer 1

Well, just made a cronjob in Scheduler, and took a look at my crontab file, and it looked like this:

0 0 * * * ls >/dev/null 2>&1 # JOB_ID_1

Notice the JOB_ID_1 at the end.

I went into ~/.gnome/gnome-scheduler/, looked at the files there, and there was one named just 1 (as in the number “one”) which had a bit of info, including the name

ver=3
title=Hello
desc=
nooutput=1

So, I made a second cronjob:

0 0 * * * ls -al >/dev/null 2>&1 # JOB_ID_2

Copied the file 1 to 2 to match the JOB_ID_2, changed the description, making the file as:

ver=3
title=This is a test
desc=
nooutput=1

Then I switched over to Gnome-Schedule, and it had added the cronjob, and had the name updated.

Follow the same steps, and you should be able to manually name any cronjob you want