UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

hi,
instead of typing crontab -e i gave crontab -r and hit enter. So i lost all my scripts.
Is there any way to restore the deleted scripts?
Please help me out

Thanks
Ajay

Backups, if you're lucky. Other than that cron doesn't save any entries in other locations. But crontab -r doesn't remove the scripts itself, only the crontab entries you've made for them.

Ok. Thanks a lot!
How do we get the entries then? Im sorry but im very new to this.

Thanks
Ajay

They are definitely lost...
active/current cron files reside usually in /var/spool/cron/crontabs, so unless you have a backup, you are in bad position...
So this may teach you that next time, you create a cronfile somewhere in the user home directory or for root somewhere safe ( I use a /sm full of subdirectories...) and load it with

Code:

crontab cronfile

Unless you have urgent modification to do, you avoid the use of crontab -e, and edit the original file - you can even compare by using

Code:

crontab -l >cronfile.last
diff cronfile cronfile.last

This prevents you to loose it if an admin has to suddenly in a panic, for maintenance stop the scheduler and removes all files in the above mentioned directory (and dont think it never happens I saw it a few times...)