UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi All,

Ref: "build crontab from a text file" in same forum. (I am not allowed to post URL's in the first post)

We are reorganizing our UNIX Crontab file by first making changes in a word pad text file. The intent is to then copy it back to Crontab. Will this work? Copy and Paste does not seem to work.

From the crontab man page -

Code:

Code:

 
crontab [file] Create or replace your crontab file by copying the specified file, or standard input if file is omitted or - is specified as file , into the crontab directory, /var/spool/cron/crontabs. The name of your crontab file in the crontab directory is the same as your effective user name.

So, something like this:


Code:

Code:

cat mynotepadfile | crontab -mynotepadfile

will have to have ALL of the entries needed from the old crontab, because this wipes all of the lines in the existing crontab file.
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My script does many actions as root. A part of this script is to add a new crontab entry for a normal user.

I used this method and now need to transfer "mynotepadfile" to crontab of "myuser". But the method "crontab [file]" only works for the user invoking it. So this will edit root's crontab, but not someone else's. At the same time, the whole script cannot be executed as non-root.

How would the syntax "cat mynotepadfile | crontab -" change?

Thank you.