On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 11:11 AM, ne... guhvies@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 16:09, Niki Kovacs contact@kikinovak.net wrote:
I have to setup a scheduled task on a server, and I just read through some crontab docs. Now I'm confused. It's not so much the syntax of the cron job to define (I got that), it's more... how do I get to define it? Use a text editor (vi or the likes) to edit /etc/crontab directly? Or create some empty file in /etc/cron.daily or /etc/cron.hourly or the likes and then edit it using crontab -e ?
As root, crontab -e. This is all you need.
If the script is to run as root and you aren't overly concerned about the precise time your script runs, only that it runs at these intervals, you can place your script or a soft-link to your script in one of the directories /etc/cron.monthly, /etc/cron.weekly, /etc/cron.daily and /etc/cron.hourly.
Any output from your script will be emailed to you, if this is setup.
To the best of my knowledge the scripts in these directories are run in alphabetical order, you can control the order if desired by the naming of the script.
In this case, crontab -e is not needed, create your script in our favorite editor.
Brett