CERTWATCH.CRON(5)

📦 version 1.3, in epel 9, fedora 43, fedora 44

✨ CERTWATCH.CRON(5) — the girlies' guide to not letting your certs expire ✨

ok so bestie, this is certwatch.cron, and it lives in section 5 of the certwatch manual (that's the "file formats and conventions" girlies, not the command girlies, iykyk). It's literally all about generating SSL/TLS certificate expiry warnings for mod_ssl. That's it. That's the whole job. 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

/etc/cron.daily/certwatch

one line. one path. main character energy, no notes. 💅

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So here's the tea ☕ — the /etc/cron.daily/certwatch cron job runs a daily expiry check on the certificate configured in mod_ssl. Every single day. Like clockwork. Because nothing ruins your week like a cert silently expiring and taking your whole vibe with it. 😭

And the good news? You can configure this little cron job through the file /etc/sysconfig/certwatch. In that file, these options are available to you:

  • NOCERTWATCH=yes — turns the cron job off completely. Full stop, no daily check, she's gone, muted, blocked. 🚫
  • CERTWATCH_OPTS="..." — lets you set any additional options to pass along to certwatch, like --period and friends. Customize her!! ✨
⚠️ heads up bestie: that second one is written as CERTWATCH_OPTS="..." with the quotes and the ellipsis, so yeah — you're dropping your options in there as a quoted string. Keep the format, don't freestyle it.

🦋 FILES 🦋

  • /etc/cron.daily/certwatch
  • /etc/sysconfig/certwatch

the first one does the thing, the second one tells it how to do the thing. the duo. the iconic pair. 🫶

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

go read the friends, they all know each other 💜

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Joe Orton <jorton@redhat.com> Author

the actual legend who wrote this. respect the OG. 🙌

and that's the whole page, bestie — certified slay, expiry warnings secured, mod_ssl protected, periodt. 💅✨

this cutie came from the certwatch manual, May 2020 edition — page tagged CERTWATCH.CRON(5), mwah 🎀

📦 where this page comes from