How to use cron on a Synology NAS

Unlike other Linux based systems, “crontab -e” won’t work on the Synology NAS.

Modifying crontab and enabling the deamon

  1. Become root
sudo -i
  1. Edit /etc/crontab
nano /etc/crontab
  1. Restart the cron deamon by typing:
synoservice -restart crond

Note: After a shutdown or reboot, you’ll need to restart the cron deamon to enable it again.

Running tasks using a different user account

If you want to run a task under a different user than root you can do the following: 

#min    hour   mday    month   wday    who     command
30      0,6,12,18       *       *       *       root    /bin/su -c "/var/services/homes/myuser/apps/flexget.sh" myuser

The task above will run a flexget script under the username myuser ever 4 hours.