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Annotated edit history of crontab(1) version 4, including all changes. View license author blame.
Rev Author # Line
1 perry 1 !!NAME
3 CraigBox 2 crontab - maintain crontab files for individual users (V3)
1 perry 3
4 !!SYNOPSIS
5 crontab [[ -u user ] file
6 crontab [[ -u user ] { -l | -r | -e }
3 CraigBox 7
1 perry 8 !!DESCRIPTION
3 CraigBox 9 ''crontab'' is the program used to install, deinstall or list the tables used to drive the cron(8) daemon in Vixie Cron. Each user can have their own crontab, and though these are files in /var/spool/cron/crontabs, they are not intended to be edited directly.
1 perry 10
3 CraigBox 11 If the ''/etc/cron.allow'' file exists, then you must be listed therein in order to be allowed to use this command. If the ''/etc/cron.allow'' file does not exist but the ''/etc/cron.deny'' file does exist, then you must __not__ be listed in the ''/etc/cron.deny'' file in order to use this command. If neither of these files exists, then depending on site-dependent configuration parameters, only the super user will be allowed to use this command, or all users will be able to use this command. For standard Debian systems, all users may use this command.
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4 CraigBox 13 If the ''-u'' option is given, it specifies the name of the user whose crontab is to be tweaked. If this option is not given, ''crontab'' examines "your" crontab, i.e., the crontab of the person executing the command. Note that su(1) can confuse ''crontab'' and that if you are running inside of su(1) you should always use the ''-u'' option for safety's sake.
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3 CraigBox 15 The first form of this command is used to install a new crontab from some named file or standard input if the pseudo-filename "-" is given.
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3 CraigBox 17 The ''-l'' option causes the current crontab to be displayed on standard output. See the note under __DEBIAN SPECIFIC__ below.
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3 CraigBox 19 The ''-r'' option causes the current crontab to be removed.
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3 CraigBox 21 The ''-e'' option is used to edit the current crontab using the editor specified by the VISUAL or EDITOR environment variables. The specified editor __must__ edit the file in place; any editor that unlinks the file and recreates it cannot be used. After you exit from the editor, the modified crontab will be installed automatically.
1 perry 22
23 !!DEBIAN SPECIFIC
3 CraigBox 24 The "out-of-the-box" behaviour for ''crontab -l'' is to display the three line "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE" header that is placed at the beginning of the crontab when it is installed. The problem is that it makes the sequence
1 perry 25
26 crontab -l | crontab -
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3 CraigBox 28 non-idempotent -- you keep adding copies of the header. This causes pain to scripts that use sed to edit a crontab. Therefore, the default behaviour of the __-l__ option has been changed to not output such header. You may obtain the original behaviour by setting the environment variable __CRONTAB_NOHEADER__ to 'N', which will cause the ''crontab -l'' command to emit the extraneous header.
1 perry 29
30 !!SEE ALSO
3 CraigBox 31 crontab(5), cron(8)
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33 !!FILES
3 CraigBox 34
35 /etc/cron.allow %%%
36 /etc/cron.deny %%%
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1 perry 38
39
40 !!STANDARDS
3 CraigBox 41 The ''crontab'' command conforms to IEEE Std1003.2-1992 ("POSIX"). This new command syntax differs from previous versions of Vixie Cron, as well as from the classic SVR3 syntax.
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1 perry 43
44
45 !!DIAGNOSTICS
3 CraigBox 46 A fairly informative usage message appears if you run it with a bad command line.
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1 perry 48
49
50 !!BUGS
3 CraigBox 51 Although cron requires that each entry in a crontab end in a newline character, the neither the crontab command nor the cron daemon will detect this error. Instead, the crontab will appear load normally. However, the command will never run. The best choice is to ensure that your crontab has a blank line at the end.
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3 CraigBox 55 !!AUTHOR
1 perry 56
3 CraigBox 57 Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com>
2 DrewStephens 58
3 CraigBox 59 !!LOCAL NOTES
2 DrewStephens 60
3 CraigBox 61 I recently had a problem where a computer was running cronjobs at the wrong time, according to system time. I searched around a bit and found that cronjobs are dependent on the hardware clock's time and as such, even though the system time looked right and my crontab was correce, jobs were running at the wrong time. A quick look at the adjtimex and hwclock man pages fixed that -- !DrewStephens
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