The "hellotest" Cron Job

Introduction

If you have Cron Jobs running on a Linux System, how do you know if the Cron is still running?

You need to have a "hellotest" Cron Job which is sending you an Email when a Node is rebooting and on every sunday you will get an Informational Message.

Solution

Create the following File on your Linux System at the Path /etc/cron.d/hellotest

# hellotest

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
SHELL=/bin/bash
MAILTO=root

@reboot     root    echo "booting"

0 0 * * 7   root    echo "it is sunday"

Don't forget to forward the root Email to your Email Address:

echo "you@yourmail.com" > /root/.forward

or

echo "root: you@yourmail.com" >> /etc/aliases && newaliases