Migration from crontab

This guide helps you move your existing cron jobs from crontab -e to cronbase.

Why migrate?

Feature	crontab	cronbase
Web dashboard	No	Yes
Execution history	No	Yes
stdout/stderr capture	Via mail only	Stored + viewable
Retry on failure	No	Yes, with exponential backoff
Timeout enforcement	No	Yes, per-job
Alerts	No	Slack, Discord, webhooks
Enable/disable	Delete + re-add	Toggle on/off
Config as code	Sort of	YAML/JSON files

Step-by-step migration

1. Export your current crontab

crontab -l > my-crontab.txt

2. Convert to cronbase format

A crontab entry like:

0 2 * * * /usr/local/bin/backup.sh >> /var/log/backup.log 2>&1

Becomes:

jobs:
  - name: backup
    schedule: "0 2 * * *"
    command: /usr/local/bin/backup.sh
    description: Nightly backup

Note: you don't need >> /var/log/backup.log 2>&1 — cronbase captures stdout and stderr automatically.

3. Handle common crontab patterns

Output redirection — cronbase captures output automatically. Remove >> logfile 2>&1.

MAILTO — Replace with webhook alerts:

on_failure: https://hooks.slack.com/services/...

PATH and environment — Use env and cwd:

jobs:
  - name: my-job
    schedule: "0 * * * *"
    command: ./run.sh
    cwd: /opt/myapp
    env:
      PATH: /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin
      NODE_ENV: production

Lock files (flock) — cronbase prevents concurrent execution of the same job automatically. Remove flock wrappers.

4. Load and verify

# Load your config
cronbase start --config cronbase.yaml

# List jobs to verify
cronbase list

# Test a job manually
cronbase run backup

5. Disable the old crontab

Once you're confident everything works:

# Backup
crontab -l > crontab-backup.txt

# Clear
crontab -r

Cron expression compatibility

cronbase supports the standard 5-field cron format used by crontab. If your existing expressions work in crontab, they'll work in cronbase.

Supported features:

• Standard 5 fields: minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week
• Ranges: 1-5
• Steps: */15, 1-30/2
• Lists: 1,5,10
• Names: mon-fri, jan,mar,jul
• Presets: @daily, @hourly, @weekly, @monthly, @yearly

Not supported:

• 6-field expressions with seconds (crontab doesn't support these either)
• @reboot (use your init system for startup tasks)