Crontab

Edit

To edit your crontab enter the following command.

$ crontab -e

If emacs doesn't come up as the editor the following when added to your environment will fix it.

$ export EDITOR=emacs

List

To show what you have setup following an edit.

$ crontab -l

Example

The following comment block is useful to start your crontab with. It shows the positions of each value and what they mean.

# * * * * * [user] command to be executed
# - - - - -
# | | | | |
# | | | | +----- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0)
# | | | +------- month (1 - 12)
# | | +--------- day of month (1 - 31)
# | +----------- hour (0 - 23)
# +------------- min (0 - 59)

Hourly

The following example shows how to run the command 'script.sh' hourly with the results (what the sripts prints to stdio) passed to a log file script.log in foo's logs directory

0 * * * * script.sh >> /home/foo/logs/script.log

Links