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Cron with web hosting services

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Your web-based control panel may have a web page that allows you to set up a Cron service process.

CPanel cron service

If you are using CPanel, login then look for "Advanced" category towards the bottom of the page. Click on Cron Jobs -> Advanced (Unix style). Enter the following for the cron to run every 30 minutes.

Email address for output: emailaddress@mydomain.con
Minute:*/30
Hour:*
Day:*
Month:*
Weekday:* 
Command: wget -q -O /dev/null http://www.mydomain.com/moodle/admin/cron.php

Click Commit Changes. Check your email for the output.

Cpanel-cron-setup.JPG

Other systems cron service

For other systems, look for a button called "Cron jobs". In there you can put the same sort of Unix commands as listed below.


If you don't have permissions to run the 'wget' command on the server, you can use this php command:

/usr/local/bin/php -q /real/path/to/script/admin/cron.php

For example:

/usr/local/bin/php -q /home/username/public_html/moodle/admin/cron.php

If you don't know what is the real path of your Moodle folder you can use the PHP command realpath.

Another alternative, if you do not have permission to run the 'wget' command, may be to use a curl command.

For example:

curl --silent --compressed http://mydomain.com/moodle/admin/cron.php

Note: In version 2.0 and later the path for running cron.php from the commandline has changed. Use c:\moodle\admin\cli\cron.php