Question

I’m using crontab since a long time and i was wondering if it’s better to make 10 cron or to make 1 cron calling 10 files?

My cron task look like that :

*/1 * * * * wget -o /dev/null -O /dev/null "http://localhost/website1/task.php"
...
*/1 * * * * wget -o /dev/null -O /dev/null "http://localhost/website20/task.php"

And i got like 40 or 50 cron task in total (all calling for some pages on localhost, at different intervals)

So i would like to know if it’s not better to make only one task calling a file which will include the php files for my 20 websites, like :

cron task n1 =>

*/1 * * * * wget -o /dev/null -O /dev/null "http://localhost/call_task.php"

with “call_task.php” calling for :

http://localhost/website1/task.php
to
http://localhost/website20/task.php

Regards,

Answer 1

Both methods will work, but I would always try to group files together. This makes it much easier to manage your cron jobs.

You could also create shell skripts for your jobs, e.g.:

hourly.sh:
wget "http://my/hourly/url1"
wget "http://my/hourly/url2"

15minutes.sh:
wget "http://my/15minutes/url1"
wget "http://my/15minutes/url2"

…and set these in your cronjob:

0 * * * * * sh hourly.sh
0,15,30,45 * * * * sh 15minutes.sh

This way you get your scripts easily manageable, you can keep track what to download in which frequency and it keeps your crontab small and manageable.