In this book, you've learned about various tasks you can perform to keep SUSE Linux running smoothly. You may decide that you want some of these tasks to occur on a regular basis. For example, perhaps you want your home directory to be backed up every day, or perhaps you want to clean the /tmp folder to ensure that you always have enough free disk space. You could carry out each task individually, but human nature would no doubt step in, and you would forget, or you might perform the action twice, because you've forgotten that you've already done it.
As you might expect, SUSE Linux is able to automate the running of particular tasks. They can either be run periodically at scheduled times or as one-time tasks. Using SUSE Linux's scheduling features is explained in this chapter.