It isn’t always necessary to run Cron as a service to schedule Cygwin scripts and programs. As an alternative to using cron, you can run cygwin scripts & programs using Windows Scheduled Tasks.

From the Scheduled Tasks Window, right-click on an empty space and select ‘new task’. Enter the path to Cygwin, -l, -c, and then the full command surrounded by quotes in the RUN field. e.g.

c:\cygwin64\bin\bash.exe -l -c "/full/path/to/command/plus-command >> /full/path/to/a/logfile 2>&1"

Then, in the START IN field enter:

c:\cygwin64\bin

Add a description and give your task a meaningful name so that when you come back to it in a year you know what it’s for and you’re done!

Breaking this down:

• -l :Run as if logged on at a shell
• -c :Run this command
• >> logfile :Put any output into a text file for troubleshooting
• 2>&1 :Redirect stderr to stdout (i.e. your logfile – since you’ve already redirected stdout to /full/path/to/a/logfile)

Quick and easy!

Use Below command to setup cron as service

$ cron-config
Do you want to remove or reinstall it (yes/no) yes
Do you want to install the cron daemon as a service? (yes/no) yes
Enter the value of CYGWIN for the daemon: [ ] ntsec
Do you want the cron daemon to run as yourself? (yes/no) no
Do you want to start the cron daemon as a service now? (yes/no) yes

Next use crontab to create the sceduled task

$ crontab -e
0 0 * * * rsync -avz --delete --password-file /etc/rsync.pwd /cygdrive/g/www/ rsync://[email protected]:/Public/www

This syncs my laptop with my NAS every day at midnight. I also have a task in my windows Task Manager to wake the laptop from sleep at that time to do the sync. So I can sleep, without worry.

Configuration

Create the /etc/rsyncd.secrets file and add the user [xfloyd] with password [password] separated by a colon.

Read More

On client side:

crate password file “rsync.pwd”

vi /etc/rsync.pwd
chown 18.544 /etc/rsync.pwd
chmod 660 /etc/rsync.pwd

rsync -rtlHv --delete --password-file=rsync.pwd /SOURCE ON CLIENT/ rsync://rsync@DESTINATION IP:/DESTINATION FOLDER/