I say the book works just fine: http://web2py.com/book/default/chapter/04#Cron
The syntax you want to use is: @reboot * * * * root *applications/test/controllers/private.py Set that in your app/cron/crontab and make sure your controller does db.commit() at the end. Also you need SOFTCRON = True in the wsgihandler (if you run it as WSGI script).