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This page details how to create a daily script for use with FreeBSD. A daily script can do a whole lot of work for you while you sleep, or whatever; they can be very useful. FreeBSD in fact runs a daily maintenance script already - the process below creates a separate daily script, for general purposes. The script below should also not be confused with a daily backup script which you may also run, although they could be combined.

The process below details how to start a PHP script from cron, each day. Then we can use PHP to do whatever we need to do in our daily event.

step 1. create the PHP script

<?php
 phpinfo();
?>

Save the above script as /usr/home/adminuser/daily.php

step 2. schedule the PHP script

Schedule the daily event by adding the following lines to the end of root's crontab (this runs the script every day at 07:50):

# run the daily event at 7:50AM
50      07       *       *       *     /usr/local/bin/php /usr/home/adminuser/daily.php > /usr/home/adminuser/daily.txt 2>&1

And that's it! Every day at 07:50, your PHP script will run, in there you can do whatever you need to do, with full PHP functionality.

Notes:

• see working with cron for more details about cron
• The PHP script can be tested by running php /usr/home/adminuser/daily.php
• PHP CLI support must be installed for the PHP script to run

related articles:  my FreeBSD diary  FreeBSD and ATA disks  adding a disk  upgrading a disk  FreeBSD backups  backing up to a remote volume  Samba as a file server (low security)  Samba as a file server (high security)  Samba as a Primary Domain Controller  Samba as a member server  Samba as a print server (with CUPS)  troubleshooting Samba  troubleshooting printing with CUPS  configuring sendmail  installing phpMyAdmin  dealing with mail for root  working with cron  installing and using GPG  automated PHP scripting  special-purpose users  upgrading to key-based authentication  distributed data warehousing  doing a minor version upgrade  upgrading from 6.1 to 6.4  upgrading 6.2 and below  installing and using Webmin  installing and using denyhosts  filesystem access controls  unix basics