CRONTAB(1)CRONTAB(1)NAMEcrontab - maintain crontab files for individual users (V3)
SYNOPSIScrontab [ -u user ] file
crontab [ -u user ] { -l | -r [ -i ] | -e }
DESCRIPTIONcrontab 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.
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 con‐
figuration 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.
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 exam‐
ines "your" crontab, i.e., the crontab of the person executing the com‐
mand. Note that su(8) can confuse crontab and that if you are running
inside of su(8) you should always use the -u option for safety's sake.
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.
The -l option causes the current crontab to be displayed on standard
output. See the note under DEBIAN SPECIFIC below.
The -r option causes the current crontab to be removed.
The -e option is used to edit the current crontab using the editor
specified by the VISUAL or EDITOR environment variables. After you
exit from the editor, the modified crontab will be installed automati‐
cally. If neither of the environment variables is defined, then the
default editor /usr/bin/editor is used.
The -i option modifies the -r option to prompt the user for a 'y/Y'
response before actually removing the crontab.
DEBIAN SPECIFIC
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
crontab-l | crontab-
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 vari‐
able CRONTAB_NOHEADER to 'N', which will cause the crontab-l command
to emit the extraneous header.
SEE ALSOcrontab(5), cron(8)FILES
/etc/cron.allow
/etc/cron.deny
STANDARDS
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.
DIAGNOSTICS
A fairly informative usage message appears if you run it with a bad
command line.
BUGS
Although cron requires that each entry in a crontab end in a newline
character, neither the crontab command nor the cron daemon will detect
this error. Instead, the crontab will appear to load normally. However,
the command will never run. The best choice is to ensure that your
crontab has a blank line at the end.
AUTHOR
Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com>
4th Berkeley Distribution 29 December 1993CRONTAB(1)
