To activate cron in TinyCore use following steps to set it up:

Add following entry to /opt/bootlocal.sh to startup cron automatically after each boot

crond -L /dev/null 2>&1

Using crontab -e as tc user add following crontab entry:

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

# run a script each minute
# use absolute paths to point to scripts
* * * * * sh /home/tc/bin

Add the crontabs to .filetool.sh file to be able to backup crontabs:

echo var/spool/cron >> /opt/.filetool.lst

Run the backup script to backup manually (it is better to be safe then sorry):

filetool.sh -d
filetool.sh -b

Reboot the TinyCore guest

After the reboot verify the crontabs have been restored from backup running:

crontab -l