The documentation page ^^ works well, but I have two suggestions:
Emphasize to use Matomo cron
Maybe emphasize that the regular crontab -e may not work, but that /etc/cron.d/matomo-archive should be used?
Use Matomo tmp-folder for example log file
Example command, log file is currently /home/example/matomo-archive.log:
5 * * * * www-data /usr/bin/php /path/to/matomo/console core:archive --url=http://example.org/matomo/ > /home/example/matomo-archive.log
Using that example path is not ideal, since www-data user may not have write permission in the standard user’s folder, which is the logical place to use, based on the example. For example /home/redacted_username (“[…] matomo_archive.log is created, however it is empty“ comment above).
Instead, the example log file could just use the Matomo tmp folder instead, since www-data has access by default? (suggestion bolded):
5 * * * * www-data /usr/bin/php /path/to/matomo/console core:archive --url=http://example.org/matomo/ > /path/to/matomo/tmp/matomo-archive.log