Every sysadmin curses cron, the stubborn scheduling daemon that endlessly nags servers. Ever wonder about the weird name? Unix pioneer Ken Thompson cribbed it from “Chronos,” Greek god of time. Unix tradition dictates short commands, so “Chronos” got brutally shortened into “cron,” producing a utility universally loved, loathed, and feared by generations of admins. Today, cron remains quietly ticking away in dark corners of servers worldwide—an unseen, relentless Greek deity patiently waiting to execute your mistyped commands at 3:00 AM.
