BreadCrumbs: Crontab

Crontab

From Luke Jackson

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Revision as of 18:28, 25 November 2006

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Summary

cron is a linux, unix, and solaris utility that allows tasks to be automatically run in the background at regular intervals by the cron daemon. These tasks are often termed as cron jobs. Crontab (CRON TABle) is a file which contains the schedule of cron entries to be run and at specified times. All of the path names referenced are relevant to FreeBSD and may differ slightly depending on your distribution.

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Crontab Restrictions

You can execute crontab if your name appears in the file /usr/lib/cron/cron.allow. If that file does not exist, you can use crontab if your name does not appear in the file /usr/lib/cron/cron.deny. If only cron.deny exists and is empty, all users can use crontab. If neither file exists, only the root user can use crontab. The allow/deny files consist of one user name per line.

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Crontab Commands

To specify the editor which will open the crontab file you must redefine the enviromental variable EDITOR. The example below shows how to change it to VIM. 

export EDITOR=vi

Edit your crontab file, or create one if it doesn't already exist. 

crontab -e

Display your crontab file. 

crontab -l

Remove your crontab file. 

crontab -r

Display the last time you edited your crontab file. (This option is only available on a few systems.) 

crontab -v
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