Automating tasks with cron on CheckPoint Gaia

To use cron on CheckPoint Gaia firewall you need to create a separate user, as “admin” user crontab file is overwritten on every reboot by /bin/cron_xlate.

Instead of using default command :
> crontab -e
It will warn you as follows:

# This file was AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED
# Generated by /bin/cron_xlate on Wed Jan 14 13:33:33 2015
#
# DO NOT EDIT
#
SHELL=/bin/bash
MAILTO=""
#
# mins hrs daysinm months daysinw command
#


You will also need to specify the user:

> crontab -u cron_user -e

To create a new user for cron, use following commands:


add user cron_user uid 0 homedir /home/cron_user
set user cron_user gid 100 shell /bin/bash
add rba user cron_user roles adminRole
set user cron_user password


Make sure you use new user’s home folder for output in your scripts, to avoid issues with permissions.