ANACRONTAB(5)							   File Formats 						     ANACRONTAB(5)

NAME

       /etc/anacrontab - configuration file for Anacron

DESCRIPTION

       The  /etc/anacrontab  configuration file describes the jobs controlled by anacron(8).  It can contain three types of lines: job-description
       lines, environment assignments, or empty lines.

       Job-description lines can have the following format:

	  period in days   delay in minutes   job-identifier   command

       The period in days variable specifies the frequency of execution of a job in days.  This variable can be represented by	an  integer  or  a
       macro (@daily, @weekly, @monthly), where @daily denotes the same value as the integer 1, @weekly the same as 7, and @monthly specifies that
       the job is run once a month, independent on the length of the month.

       The delay in minutes variable specifies the number of minutes anacron waits, if necessary, before executing a job.  This variable is repre-
       sented by an integer where 0 means no delay.

       The job-identifier variable specifies a unique name of a job which is used in the log files.

       The  command  variable specifies the command to execute.  The command can either be a command such as ls /proc >> /tmp/proc or a command to
       execute a custom script.

       Environment assignment lines can have the following format:

	  VAR=VALUE

       Any spaces around VAR are removed.  No spaces around VALUE are allowed (unless you want them to be  part  of  the  value).   The  specified
       assignment takes effect from the next line until the end of the file, or to the next assignment of the same variable.

       The  START_HOURS_RANGE  variable  defines an interval (in hours) when scheduled jobs can be run.  In case this time interval is missed, for
       example, due to a power down, then scheduled jobs are not executed that day.

       The RANDOM_DELAY variable denotes the maximum number of minutes that will be added to the delay in minutes variable which is specified  for
       each  job.   A  RANDOM_DELAY set to 12 would therefore add, randomly, between 0 and 12 minutes to the delay in minutes for each job in that
       particular anacrontab.  When set to 0, no random delay is added.

       Empty lines are either blank lines, line containing white spaces only, or lines with white spaces followed by a '#' followed  by  an  arbi-
       trary comment.

       You can continue a line onto the next line by adding a '' at the end of it.

       In  case  you want to disable Anacron, add the 0anacron cron job (which is a part of crontab(1)) into the /etc/cron.hourly/jobs.deny direc-
       tory.

EXAMPLE

       This example shows how to set up an Anacron job similar in functionality to /etc/crontab which starts all regular  jobs	between  6:00  and
       8:00 only.  A RANDOM_DELAY which can be 30 minutes at the most is specified.  Jobs will run serialized in a queue where each job is started
       only after the previous one is finished.

       # environment variables
       SHELL=/bin/sh
       PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
       MAILTO=root
       RANDOM_DELAY=30
       # Anacron jobs will start between 6am and 8am.
       START_HOURS_RANGE=6-8
       # delay will be 5 minutes + RANDOM_DELAY for cron.daily
       1	 5    cron.daily	  nice run-parts /etc/cron.daily
       7	 0    cron.weekly	  nice run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
       @monthly  0    cron.monthly	  nice run-parts /etc/cron.monthly

SEE ALSO

       anacron(8), crontab(1)

       The Anacron README file.

AUTHOR

       Itai Tzur <itzur@actcom.co.il>

       Currently maintained by Pascal Hakim <pasc@(debian.org|redellipse.net)>.

       For Fedora, maintained by Marcela Malaova <mmaslano@redhat.com>.

cronie								    2012-11-22							     ANACRONTAB(5)