Cron job to restart Apache every N hours Ubuntu 10.4

As root run crontab -e then add the following line

0 * * * * * /etc/init/apache2 restart

Save the crontab and then run restart cron

Once you've fixed your problem just remove that line and restart cron again.

I agree with the general approach suggested by obs, but think there are a few typos in there, and would suggest running

crontab -e

and adding the following line

0 * * * * /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

(or you could use the following syntax instead)

@hourly /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

and then save the file and exit the editor. To disable this, just run crontab -e again and remove the line you added, save, and exit.

It should not be necessary to restart cron.

(man 5 crontab will tell you about the available syntax and give examples.)

Are you sure? At some point, Ubuntu got rid of crontab and the necessity to restart anything.

…Ok yeah I hadn't had my morning cup of tea yet when I wrote that….

The crontab command appears to still be present in Ubuntu 10.04.

You're right, I'm remembering some other cron-related change in Ubuntu.

If cron were to go away I'd leave Ubuntu and go to straight Debian or if that didn't work out

I'd go back to some RPM based distro.

If Linode stopped offering VPS service, I'd probably have to ditch them and go to Amazon; if that didn't work out, it's totally OpenVZ time.