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UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers
crontab problem
Post 10130 by Kelam_Magnus on Thursday 8th of November 2001 09:34:42 AM
11-08-2001
crontab options
Guest100,
I used to use only "crontab -e" until I found this way of editing the crontab. It is much safer for you and if you make any mistakes it doesn't corrupt your crontab file.
When you look at the options for the manpage for crontab, the first options is "crontab filename".
My only point about saving the crontab out to a file and editing it is 1) so that you will have a copy of it and 2) when you edit this text file that you just saved out, you can execute "crontab filename" to replace the current crontab with the newly edited one. In addition, it prevents you from making a mistake typing while using "crontab -e".
Step 1
Copy out the crontab to a saved file.
$ crontab -l > somefile
Step 2
edit somefile and make changes.
$ vi somefile
Step 3
copy the newly edited file back into place.
$ crontab somefile
This is the safest way to edit the crontab file so that it doesn't get corrupted.
I work for a very large telecom company and this is the company standard for all platforms: SUN, HPUX, and AIX with several different versions on each platform.
In addition, yes you can go to /usr/spool/cron/crontabs and vi the file in question, edit it and save. The file will be recognized by cron because I have done this as well. I have even cut and pasted from a Word document into a telnet session while vi'ing a file in /usr/spool/cron/crontabs file. And there was no corruption of the file when I saved it and ran cron.
Trust me, all of these things work! Can someone else back me up on this? I am not trying to mess you up, only to help you out.
I used to use only "crontab -e" until I found this way of editing the crontab. It is much safer for you and if you make any mistakes it doesn't corrupt your crontab file.
When you look at the options for the manpage for crontab, the first options is "crontab filename".
My only point about saving the crontab out to a file and editing it is 1) so that you will have a copy of it and 2) when you edit this text file that you just saved out, you can execute "crontab filename" to replace the current crontab with the newly edited one. In addition, it prevents you from making a mistake typing while using "crontab -e".
Step 1
Copy out the crontab to a saved file.
$ crontab -l > somefile
Step 2
edit somefile and make changes.
$ vi somefile
Step 3
copy the newly edited file back into place.
$ crontab somefile
This is the safest way to edit the crontab file so that it doesn't get corrupted.
I work for a very large telecom company and this is the company standard for all platforms: SUN, HPUX, and AIX with several different versions on each platform.
In addition, yes you can go to /usr/spool/cron/crontabs and vi the file in question, edit it and save. The file will be recognized by cron because I have done this as well. I have even cut and pasted from a Word document into a telnet session while vi'ing a file in /usr/spool/cron/crontabs file. And there was no corruption of the file when I saved it and ran cron.
Trust me, all of these things work! Can someone else back me up on this? I am not trying to mess you up, only to help you out.
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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN
bcrontab
bcrontab(1) General Commands Manual bcrontab(1) NAME
bcrontab - Manage users crontab files SYNOPSIS
bcrontab [ -u user ] file bcrontab [ -u user ] { -l | -r | -e } DESCRIPTION
bcrontab interfaces with the bcron-spool daemon to manage crontab files in the privileged spool directory. OPTIONS
-u user Tell bcron-spool that we are acting on behalf of the named user. bcron-spool will only accept the username if bcrontab is running as either root or the same user ID as the named user. -l List the cronab crontab to standard output. -r Remove the user's crontab. -e Edit the current crontab. ENVIRONMENT
VISUAL If this is set, it is used as the editor to invoke to edit a crontab. EDITOR If $VISUAL is not set and this is, it is used as the editor to invoke to edit a crontab. If neither are set, /bin/vi is used. BCRON_SOCKET The path to the named socket used to communicate with bcron-spool. Defaults to /var/run/bcron-spool. LOGNAME USER These two variables are used, in order, to determine the user name invoking the program. One must be set if the -u option is not used. FILES
bcrontab tries to writes a temporary file into the current directory, and then into /tmp if that fails, in order to edit the current crontab. SEE ALSO
bcron-spool(8), crontab(5) AUTHOR
Bruce Guenter <bruceg@em.ca> bcrontab(1)