As a system administrator or application admin, You need to execute multiple TASKS or reports on a regular basis. We can automate or schedule such activities in Linux system using cron  & anacron.

We can use either cron or anacron as per our requirement but both have its features. Both cron and anacron are daemons processes.

CORN assumes your system is running continuously and online for execution. anacron can works when your system is not online 24X7. If our system is off and we have a job scheduled during this time, the job never gets executed.

Anacron uses timestamp file to check when was last time command or task was executed if schedule task or process missed the schedule due offline system. On the other hand, corn executes the required task a predefined schedule.

anacron every hour or day and check all required execution to execute WHEREAS corn runs every minute to perform required action.

Corn job can be configured by any NORMAL user but Anacron can be scheduled only by the superuser.

Corn is best when you can not expect a delay in execution time whereas Anacron is good when we can expect action in set intervals instead of specified timestamp.