How to schedule a task in Plesk for Linux?

Question

How to schedule a cron task in Plesk for Linux?

Answer

There are two types of cron tasks in Plesk:

• Customer cron tasks. This type of tasks can be created by both Customers and Administrators. They are executed on behalf of a system user. Such tasks do not provide access the filesystem outside of the document root of the web site.
• Administrator cron tasks. This type of tasks can be created by Administrators only. They are executed on behalf of the root user. Such tasks provide write access to the whole filesystem.

To schedule a Customer cron task:

1. Go to Websites & Domains > example.com > Scheduled Tasks > Add Task.
2. In the Command field put the full path to the script to be executed.
3. In the Run field set the the task execution time (an example is available here).
4. Click OK to save changes.

To schedule an Administrator cron task:

1. Go to Tools & Settings > Scheduled Tasks > Add Task.
2. In the Command field, put the full path to the script to be executed.
3. In the Run field, set the the task execution time.
4. In the System user field, leave user as root or choose another system user to run the task.
5. Click OK to save changes.

Another option is editing cron task in shell:

1. Allow the customer to login to server via SSH in Plesk > Subscription > Web Hosting Access > Access to the server over SSH
2. Login to the server over SSH
3. Run crontab -e in order to edit cron tasks.