System Crontab or Root Crontab.
/etc/crontab
is the system wide crontab.
The format of /etc/crontab
is like this:
# m h dom mon dow user command
* * * * * someuser echo 'foo'
while crontab -e
is per user, it’s worth mentioning with no -u
argument the crontab command goes to the current users crontab. You can do crontab -e -u
to edit a specific users crontab.
Notice in a per user crontab there is no ‘user’ field.
# m h dom mon dow command
* * * * * echo 'foo'
An aspect of crontabs that may be confusing is that root also has its own crontab. e.g. crontab -e -u root
will not edit /etc/crontab
See Configuring cron.
In most Linux distros, per user crontabs are typically stored in: /var/spool/cron/crontabs/
(vixie-cron).
RHEL based distributions are stored in /var/spool/cron/
. (cronie)
This post first appeared on Microsoft, IT, System Center, Infrastructure, please read the originial post: here