Cron Jobs? What are these supposed to do?

[xXsyreXx 0]

I was going through my cpanel and came upon cron jobs. I was wondering if anybody could tell me what they do and how to make them do that. Thanks to whoever helps me

[jlhaslip 4]

My understanding of Cron Jobs is they are scripts or programs which can be set to run automatically on a scheduled basis. For example, the script which detects the "suspended" users here on the forum could be a cron job. Also, a cron job could be used to automatically back-up your mysql databses every 6 hours or once a day at midnight. They would have to be something which can run unattended and from a command line entry. There would be no personal interaction with the process, to either start or stop the job, or handle physical devices to accept output. ie: feed paper into a printer or remove disks or cd's from the machine.Might be wrong, in which case someone will be by shortly to correct me.

[truefusion 3]

OpaQue made a tutorial on how to setup a basic cron job a long time ago. You may wanna check it out. It's pretty interesting.

http://forums.xisto.com/topic/6321-cron-jobs-cron-jobs-in-cpanel-cron-jobs-cron-jobs-using-php/

[xXsyreXx 0]

Thankyou both for your help and cooperation. I appreciate it