Crontab/crond or alternative in MarkII/Devkit

Hardware Mark II
1

On Mk2/devkit, it seems that the OS-level cron daemon does not have an /etc/cron.hourly directory, and actually probably is not installed at all. Is that correct? Is there an alternative already built in? And lastly, if it is true that there is no cron in os image, is there any harm or conflict if I were to install it?

As an aside, I am looking into polling for captive portal wifi and automatically accepting/confirming/logging-in so Mycroft can keep himself connected. I already have a rough draft of a python script that should be able to perform the task, but now I need some kind of scheduled/periodic-in-the-background execution facility (which is why I am seeking cron).

2

I believe the MK2 image does have systemd onboard, so perhaps you can use it’s timers.

3

A hearty thanks to you, @j1nx ! Indeed systemd with timers is installed and suitable for the task. I was not even aware of that feature; I have some catching up to do.

For anyone who follows after, a few more references to supplement the above opensource.com article:
systemd.service
NetworkTarget

I ended up needing a “.service" and a ".timer” configuration file in /etc/systemd/system to make it work, not too bad, but definitely more work than plain-old-cron.