I started writing a "oh, I never found it that difficult" comment. Then I thought to test my own belief and tried to type out a cron schedule for "run this every hour", and... Well...
As well as the already-mentioned `n * * * *` solution, there's also dropping a symlink in /etc/cron.hourly to the program to run. Or a 2-line shell script if you need to add command-line params. (The other line is the shebang.)
The cron.hourly directory is a non-standard Linux concept provided by run-parts. The FreeBSD equivalent is periodic, but that's really for system tasks and doesn't have anything more granular than daily.
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I started writing a "oh, I never found it that difficult" comment. Then I thought to test my own belief and tried to type out a cron schedule for "run this every hour", and... Well...
https://crontab.guru/#*_0/1_*_*_*
Oops. Point taken :)
As well as the already-mentioned `n * * * *` solution, there's also dropping a symlink in /etc/cron.hourly to the program to run. Or a 2-line shell script if you need to add command-line params. (The other line is the shebang.)
The cron.hourly directory is a non-standard Linux concept provided by run-parts. The FreeBSD equivalent is periodic, but that's really for system tasks and doesn't have anything more granular than daily.
Yeah, but the comparison was specifically comparing to systemd timers, so I'm pretty sure the GP wasn't considering non-Linux compatibility anyway.
Run this every hour is:
Adjust the leading digit to whichever minute of the hour you wish to run this.