*** UNIX MANUAL PAGE BROWSER ***

crontab(1) General Commands Manual crontab(1) NAME crontab - Submits a schedule of commands to cron SYNOPSIS crontab [file] crontab -l|-v|-r|-e [username] STANDARDS Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry stan- dards as follows: crontab: XPG4, XPG4-UNIX Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about in- dustry standards and associated tags. OPTIONS Edits a copy of your crontab entry. If the crontab entry does not ex- ist, creates an empty entry to edit. The -e option invokes the editor specified by the EDITOR environment variable, or uses /usr/bin/vi by default. The crontab command installs the new entry when editing is complete. [DIGITAL] If username is specified, edits the file for the specified user. You must have appropriate privileges to use this option. Displays the contents of your crontab file. Re- moves the crontab file from the crontab directory. [DIGI- TAL] Displays the name of your crontab file and the date and time at which you submitted it with crontab. OPERANDS Path name of file that contains crontab specifications in the format described. DESCRIPTION The crontab command copies the specified file or standard input if you do not specify a file into the /var/spool/cron/crontabs directory, which holds all users' crontab files. The cron command runs commands according to the instructions in the crontab files. The crontab files are named for users, and the commands in the files are run under the user's authority. For example, the com- mands in the /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root file are run under root au- thority. When you use the crontab command, the file under your author- ity is affected. For example, if adm invokes the crontab -l command, the /var/spool/cron/crontabs/adm file is displayed. If the username argument is included, the specified user's crontab file is listed and edited rather than the current user's crontab file. You must have root privileges to specify the username argument. By default, the vi editor is used. After cron runs commands according to the contents of your crontab file, it mails you the output from standard output and standard error for these commands, unless you redirect standard output or standard er- ror. Note When entries are made to a crontab file by using the crontab command, all previous entries in the file are removed. You can use the crontab command if your user name appears in the /usr/lib/cron/cron.allow file. If that file does not exist, the crontab command checks the /usr/lib/cron/cron.deny file to determine if you should be denied access to crontab. The allow/deny files contain one user name per line. If neither file exists, you can submit a job only if you are operating with superuser authority. Each crontab file entry consists of a line with six fields, separated by spaces and tabs. The information in the fields specifies when the command runs and the name of the command. The fields specify the fol- lowing: The first field specifies the minute (0 to 59). The second field specifies the hour (0 to 23). The third field specifies the day of the month (1 to 31). The fourth field specifies the month of the year (1 to 12). The fifth field specifies the day of the week (0 to 6 for Sunday to Saturday). The sixth field specifies the shell command to be executed. You can specify the following values in the fields that indicate the time: An integer (within the appropriate range of values) Two integers separated by a dash to indicate an inclusive range A list of integers separated by commas An asterisk to select all possible values You can specify the days on which the command is to execute in two fields (day of the month and day of the week). You can specify both fields, or you can specify only one field. To use only one field to specify the days, the other field should contain an asterisk (*). If both methods are used, the command is executed whenever either of the specifications is met. [DIGITAL] For example, the following entry runs command at midnight on the first and fifteenth days of each month, as well as every Monday: 0 0 1,15 * 1 command The cron program runs the command named in the sixth field at the spec- ified date and time. If you include a percent sign (%) in the sixth field, cron treats everything that precedes it (in that field) as the command invocation, and makes all that follows it available to standard input, unless you escape the percent sign (\%) or double quote it ("%"). An exclamation point (!) in the sixth field is translated as a newline character. The shell runs only the first line of the command field (up to a per- cent sign or End-of-Line). All other lines are made available to the command as standard input. The cron program invokes a subshell from your $HOME directory. This means that it will not run your file. If you schedule a command to run when you are not logged in and you want to have commands in your run, you must explicitly do so in the crontab file. (For a more detailed discussion of how sh can be invoked, see the sh command.) The cron program supplies a default environment for every shell, defin- ing HOME, LOGNAME, SHELL (=/usr/bin/sh), and PATH (=:/usr/bin). [DIGITAL] To submit commands to the cron daemon, invoke the crontab command with the -e option, or perform the following tasks: [DIGI- TAL] Become the user that corresponds to the appropriate file in the /usr/spool/cron/crontabs directory. For example, if you want to submit commands that will run under adm authority, become user adm. [DIGI- TAL] Use the crontab command with the -l option to copy the appropri- ate file from the /usr/spool/cron/crontabs directory to a temporary file in your home directory. For example, if you are user adm, you could use the following command: crontab -l > temp_adm [DIGITAL] Edit the temporary file and add the commands you want to run at a specified time. [DIGITAL] Use the crontab command and specify the temporary file to submit the commands to the cron daemon. NOTES When entries are made to a crontab file, all previous entries are erased. If your user ID is associated with more than one user name, crontab uses the first user name that appears in the /etc/passwd file, regardless of which user name you might actually be using. [DIGI- TAL] The file /usr/lib/cron is a symbolic link to /var/adm/cron. [DIGITAL] If cron.allow exists, the superuser's user name must appear there for that superuser to be able to use the command. EXIT STATUS The following exit values are returned: Successful completion. An er- ror occurred. EXAMPLES The following example writes the time to the console every hour on the hour: 0 * * * * echo The hour is `date`. >/dev/console The following example runs calendar at 6:30 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday: 30 6 * * 1,3,5 /usr/bin/calendar - The following example writes the contents of happyholidays.txt to all users logged in at 4:00 p.m. each Friday in December and each day between December 10 and December 31 in- clusive: 0 16 10-31 12 5 /usr/sbin/wall /var/tmp/happyholidays.txt ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES The following environment variables affect the execution of crontab: Determines the editor used with the -e option. Provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the default locale is used. If any of the internationalization variables contain an in- valid setting, the utility behaves as if none of the variables had been defined. If set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all the other internationalization variables. Determines the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multibyte characters in argu- ments). Determines the locale for the format and contents of diagnos- tic messages written to standard error. Determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES. FILES Directory containing the crontab files. List of allowed users. List of denied users. Log of cron activity. Contains user information. User profile. SEE ALSO Commands: at(1), cron(8), mail(1), mailx(1), Bourne shell sh(1b), POSIX shell sh(1p) Standards: standards(5) crontab(1)