Schedule an update of the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (Linux)

To run an update on Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux, see Deploy updates for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux.

Linux (and Unix) have a tool called crontab (similar to Task Scheduler) to be able to run scheduled tasks.

Pre-requisite

Note

To get a list of all the time zones, run the following command: timedatectl list-timezones

Examples for timezones:

• America/Los_Angeles
• America/New_York
• America/Chicago
• America/Denver

To set the Cron job

Use the following commands:

Backup crontab entries

sudo crontab -l > /var/tmp/cron_backup_201118.dat

Note

Where 201118 == YYMMDD

Tip

Do this before you edit or remove.

To edit the crontab, and add a new job as a root user:

sudo crontab -e

Note

The default editor is VIM.

You might see:

0 * * * * /etc/opt/microsoft/mdatp/logrorate.sh

And

0 2 * * sat /bin/mdatp scan quick>~/mdatp_cron_job.log

See Schedule scans with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (Linux)

Press "Insert"

Add the following entries:

CRON_TZ=America/Los_Angeles

#!RHEL and variants (CentOS and Oracle Linux)

0 6 * * sun [ $(date +%d) -le 15 ] && sudo yum update mdatp -y >> ~/mdatp_cron_job.log

#!SLES and variants

0 6 * * sun [ $(date +%d) -le 15 ] && sudo zypper update mdatp >> ~/mdatp_cron_job.log

#!Ubuntu and Debian systems

0 6 * * sun [ $(date +%d) -le 15 ] && sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade mdatp >> ~/mdatp_cron_job.log

Note

In the examples above, we are setting it to 00 minutes, 6 a.m.(hour in 24 hour format), any day of the month, any month, on Sundays.[$(date +%d) -le 15] == Won't run unless it's equal or less than the 15th day (3rd week). Meaning it will run every 3rd Sundays(7) of the month at 6:00 a.m. Pacific (UTC -8).

Press "Esc"

Type ":wq" w/o the double quotes.

Note

w == write, q == quit

To view your cron jobs, type sudo crontab -l

To inspect cron job runs:

sudo grep mdatp /var/log/cron

To inspect the mdatp_cron_job.log

sudo nano mdatp_cron_job.log

For those who use Ansible, Chef, or Puppet

Use the following commands:

To set cron jobs in Ansible

cron - Manage cron.d and crontab entries

See https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest for more information.

To set crontabs in Chef

cron resource

See https://docs.chef.io/resources/cron/ for more information.

To set cron jobs in Puppet

Resource Type: cron

See https://puppet.com/docs/puppet/5.5/types/cron.html for more information.

Automating with Puppet: Cron jobs and scheduled tasks

See https://puppet.com/blog/automating-puppet-cron-jobs-and-scheduled-tasks/ for more information.

Additional information

To get help with crontab

man crontab

To get a list of crontab file of the current user

crontab -l

To get a list of crontab file of another user

crontab -u username -l

To back up crontab entries

crontab -l > /var/tmp/cron_backup.dat

Tip

Do this before you edit or remove.

To restore crontab entries

crontab /var/tmp/cron_backup.dat

To edit the crontab and add a new job as a root user

sudo crontab -e

To edit the crontab and add a new job

crontab -e

To edit other user's crontab entries

crontab -u username -e

To remove all crontab entries

crontab -r

To remove other user's crontab entries

crontab -u username -r

Explanation

+—————- minute (values: 0 - 59) (special characters: , - * /)  

| +————- hour (values: 0 - 23) (special characters: , - * /) 

| | +———- day of month (values: 1 - 31) (special characters: , - * / L W C)  

| | | +——- month (values: 1 - 12) (special characters: ,- * / )  

| | | | +—- day of week (values: 0 - 6) (Sunday=0 or 7) (special characters: , - * / L W C) 

| | | | |*****command to be executed

Tip

Do you want to learn more? Engage with the Microsoft Security community in our Tech Community: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Tech Community.