Schedule Proxmox VM Startup and Shutdown with Cron
50#Proxmox #Scheduling #CRON
Full steps can be found at https://i12bretro.github.io/tutorials/0849.html
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What is Cron?
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The cron daemon is a background process that runs particular programs at particular times (for example, every minute, day, week, or month), as specified in a crontab. By default, users may also create crontabs of their own so that processes are run on their behalf. - https://packages.debian.org/stable/cron
01. Log into Proxmox VE either via SSH or the web based shell
02. Run the following commands in the terminal
# verify the location of qm
# should output /usr/sbin/qm
which qm
# list the configured vms
qm list
03. Note the VMID of the target VM(s)
04. Determine the startup and shutdown schedule requirements for each target VM
05. Convert the startup and shutdown schedules to cron format, https://crontab.guru/ is a great utility to visualize them
06. Continue with the following commands in the terminal
# edit the cron table file
crontab -e
# if prompted, select nano from the list of editors
07. At the bottom of the file, add an entry for the start and stop of each target VM in the following format
≪%cron schedule%≫ /usr/sbin/qm ≪%start|shutdown%≫ ≪%VMID%≫
55 6 * * * /usr/sbin/qm start 100
5 23 * * * /usr/sbin/qm shutdown 100
08. Press CTRL+O, Enter, CTRL+X to write the changes and close nano
09. In the example above, VM 100 will be started at 6:55 AM and shutdown at 11:05 PM everyday
10. Cron schedules can be extremely flexible with some creativity, some examples:
https://crontab.guru/#55_6_*_*_1-5
55 6 * * 1-5 /usr/sbin/qm start 100
https://crontab.guru/#0_9_*_*_6,0
0 9 * * 6,0 /usr/sbin/qm start 100
https://crontab.guru/#0_7_*_*_1,3,5
0 7 * * 1,3,5 /usr/sbin/qm start 100
11. Linux Containers (lxc) can be controlled via the pct command
55 6 * * 1-5 /usr/sbin/pct start 103
0 9 * * 6,0 /usr/sbin/pct start 103
0 7 * * 1,3,5 /usr/sbin/pct start 103
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