How to Manage System Cron Entries with Sail CLI

Listing Cron entries

To get a list of active cron jobs in a Sail project, run:

sail cron list

Sample output:

# System Cron Entries
- id: b1c98922-d873-4ee4-8f84-93b8773367fa
  user: www-data
  schedule: */5 * * * *
  command: wp cron event run --due-now

This command will show the existing cron tasks. Each entry will have a uinque id which you can use to delete. You can also add the --json flag to get the list of cron entries in JSON format.

Note, that list will contain only cron entries added and managed by Sail CLI. If you manually add a system cron entry using crontab or /etc/cron.d, it will not show up in this list.

Adding a new Cron entry

To add a new cron entry, use the following syntax:

sail cron add <recurrence> <command>

The recurrence argument is a cron schedule expression, you can learn more about these on crontab.guru. There are a few shortcuts for convenience as well:

• hourly
• twicedaily
• daily
• weekly

The command argument is the command that you wish to run. You'll need proper escaping if using quotes and other special characters in your command, as well as the recurrence.

For example, to run the wp my-command WP-CLI command every 10 minutes, you can add it to the system cron like so:

sail cron add */10 wp my-command

To run a command every Sunday, use:

sail cron add "0 0 * * 0" "wp my-command 'with arguments'"

Add the --root flag if you need to run the command as root, otherwise it will run as the www-data user by default, which is the recommended method.

Delete a Cron job

To delete a Cron entry managed by Sail, run:

sail cron delete <id>

Where id is the unique cron entry identifier from sail cron list.

Test a Cron job

You can test a cron entry with:

sail cron run <id>

Where id is the unique cron entry identifier from sail cron list.

Default Cron entry for WordPress

When provisioning a new project with Sail, a default cron entry is automatically added to the list to spawn the WordPress Cron using WP-CLI. This event runs once every five minutes, which is more than enough for most WordPress use cases.

However, if you wish to run the WordPress cron more often, feel free to remove the entry (you can get the id from sail cron list) and add a new one with a higher frequency:

sail cron delete <id>
sail cron add */1 wp cron event run --due-now

This will spawn the WordPress cron every minute.

If you need assistance with your cron jobs in Sail CLI, please refer to our getting help section.