From Wsms

Note: This page should be crontab (all lowercase). It is Crontab due to a technical limitation of MediaWiki.

crontab has two meanings: /etc/crontab is a configuration file used by the cron deamon and crontab is a command to managed the configuration files for cron. This article deals with the crontab command

Contents 1 common usage 2 tips 2.1 choose your editor 3 see also

common usage

Edit your personal crontab using:

ggeller@harrison:~$ crontab -e

Each entry in the table is a command that will be executed at specified times. Here is a crontab entry that runs every fifteen minutes to monitor disk space usage.

# m        h dom mon dow   command
0,15,41,45 * *   *   *     date >> df.log ; df -h / >> df.log

List the contents of your crontab with with -l option:

ggeller@lincoln:~$ crontab -l
# m        h dom mon dow   command
0,15,41,45 * *   *   *     date >> df.log ; df -h / >> df.log

tips

choose your editor

ggeller@harrison:~$ export VISUAL='emacs -nw'

see also

man crontab
man 5 crontab
20061026
Handout_logrotate
20061215
Ntpdate