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Scheduling Backup Deletion with CRON

1. Open root's crontab

sudo crontab -e

2. Add a montly cron job

At the end of the doc add the following line: 

0 5 1 * * /usr/local/bin/restic-cleanup.sh >> /var/log/restic-cleanup.log 2>&1
Explanation:

  • 0 5 - run at 5:00
  • 1 - on the 1st day of the month
  • * * - every month, every weekday

NOTE: 2>&1 means "Send file descriptor 2 (errors) to the same place as file descriptor 1 (normal output)."

3. Make sure the enviroment is correct

Cron has a very limited PATH, so Restic might not be found unless it's set. Fortunately our restic_cleanup.sh script already contains the following line:

export PATH="/usr/bin:$PATH"
Cron will be able to find restic and jq

Optional: run it in dry-run mode once via cron

Instead add this line:

0 5 1 * * /usr/local/bin/restic-cleanup.sh dry-run >> /var/log/restic-cleanup.log 2>&1

Then after confirming logs look correct, change it to the real command.

4. Verify Cron installed the job

sudo crontab -l

You should see: bash 0 5 1 * * /usr/local/bin/restic-cleanup.sh >> /var/log/restic-cleanup.log 2>&1