Provided by: cron_3.0pl1-128ubuntu2_amd64 
NAME
crontab - tables for driving cron
DESCRIPTION
A crontab file contains instructions to the cron(8) daemon of the general form: ``run this command at
this time on this date''. Each user has their own crontab, and commands in any given crontab will be
executed as the user who owns the crontab. Uucp and News will usually have their own crontabs,
eliminating the need for explicitly running su(1) as part of a cron command.
Blank lines and leading spaces and tabs are ignored. Lines whose first non-space character is a hash-
sign (#) are comments, and are ignored. Note that comments are not allowed on the same line as cron
commands, since they will be taken to be part of the command. Similarly, comments are not allowed on the
same line as environment variable settings.
An active line in a crontab will be either an environment setting or a cron command. The crontab file is
parsed from top to bottom, so any environment settings will affect only the cron commands below them in
the file. An environment setting is of the form,
name = value
where the spaces around the equal-sign (=) are optional, and any subsequent non-leading spaces in value
will be part of the value assigned to name. The value string may be placed in quotes (single or double,
but matching) to preserve leading or trailing blanks. To define an empty variable, quotes must be used.
The value string is not parsed for environmental substitutions or replacement of variables, thus lines
like
PATH = $HOME/bin:$PATH
will not work as you might expect. And neither will this work
A=1
B=2
C=$A $B
There will not be any subsitution for the defined variables in the last value.
An alternative for setting up the commands path is using the fact that many shells will treat the
tilde(~) as substitution of $HOME, so if you use bash for your tasks you can use this:
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=~/bin:/usr/bin/:/bin
Several environment variables are set up automatically by the cron(8) daemon. SHELL is set to /bin/sh,
and LOGNAME and HOME are set from the /etc/passwd line of the crontab's owner. PATH is set to
"/usr/bin:/bin". HOME, SHELL, and PATH may be overridden by settings in the crontab; LOGNAME is the user
that the job is running from, and may not be changed.
(Another note: the LOGNAME variable is sometimes called USER on BSD systems... on these systems, USER
will be set also.)
In addition to LOGNAME, HOME, and SHELL, cron(8) will look at MAILTO if it has any reason to send mail as
a result of running commands in ``this'' crontab. If MAILTO is defined (and non-empty), mail is sent to
the user so named. MAILTO may also be used to direct mail to multiple recipients by separating recipient
users with a comma. If MAILTO is defined but empty (MAILTO=""), no mail will be sent. Otherwise mail is
sent to the owner of the crontab.
On the Debian GNU/Linux system, cron supports the pam_env module, and loads the environment specified by
/etc/environment and /etc/security/pam_env.conf. It also reads locale information from
/etc/default/locale. However, the PAM settings do NOT override the settings described above nor any
settings in the crontab file itself. Note in particular that if you want a PATH other than
"/usr/bin:/bin", you will need to set it in the crontab file.
By default, cron will send mail using the mail "Content-Type:" header of "text/plain" with the "charset="
parameter set to the charmap / codeset of the locale in which crond(8) is started up - ie. either the
default system locale, if no LC_* environment variables are set, or the locale specified by the LC_*
environment variables ( see locale(7)). You can use different character encodings for mailed cron job
output by setting the CONTENT_TYPE and CONTENT_TRANSFER_ENCODING variables in crontabs, to the correct
values of the mail headers of those names.
The format of a cron command is very much the V7 standard, with a number of upward-compatible extensions.
Each line has five time and date fields, followed by a command, followed by a newline character ('\n').
The system crontab (/etc/crontab) uses the same format, except that the username for the command is
specified after the time and date fields and before the command. The fields may be separated by spaces or
tabs. The maximum permitted length for the command field is 998 characters.
Commands are executed by cron(8) when the minute, hour, and month of year fields match the current time,
and when at least one of the two day fields (day of month, or day of week) match the current time (see
``Note'' below). cron(8) examines cron entries once every minute. The time and date fields are:
field allowed values
----- --------------
minute 0-59
hour 0-23
day of month 1-31
month 1-12 (or names, see below)
day of week 0-7 (0 or 7 is Sun, or use names)
A field may be an asterisk (*), which always stands for ``first-last''.
Ranges of numbers are allowed. Ranges are two numbers separated with a hyphen. The specified range is
inclusive. For example, 8-11 for an ``hours'' entry specifies execution at hours 8, 9, 10 and 11.
Lists are allowed. A list is a set of numbers (or ranges) separated by commas. Examples: ``1,2,5,9'',
``0-4,8-12''.
Step values can be used in conjunction with ranges. Following a range with ``/<number>'' specifies skips
of the number's value through the range. For example, ``0-23/2'' can be used in the hours field to
specify command execution every other hour (the alternative in the V7 standard is
``0,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22''). Steps are also permitted after an asterisk, so if you want to say
``every two hours'', just use ``*/2''.
Names can also be used for the ``month'' and ``day of week'' fields. Use the first three letters of the
particular day or month (case doesn't matter). Ranges or lists of names are not allowed.
The ``sixth'' field (the rest of the line) specifies the command to be run. The entire command portion
of the line, up to a newline or % character, will be executed by /bin/sh or by the shell specified in the
SHELL variable of the crontab file. Percent-signs (%) in the command, unless escaped with backslash (\),
will be changed into newline characters, and all data after the first % will be sent to the command as
standard input. There is no way to split a single command line onto multiple lines, like the shell's
trailing "\".
Note: The day of a command's execution can be specified by two fields — day of month, and day of week.
If both fields are restricted (i.e., aren't *), the command will be run when either field matches the
current time. For example,
``30 4 1,15 * 5'' would cause a command to be run at 4:30 am on the 1st and 15th of each month, plus
every Friday. One can, however, achieve the desired result by adding a test to the command (see the last
example in EXAMPLE CRON FILE below).
Instead of the first five fields, one of eight special strings may appear:
string meaning
------ -------
@reboot Run once, at startup.
@yearly Run once a year, "0 0 1 1 *".
@annually (same as @yearly)
@monthly Run once a month, "0 0 1 * *".
@weekly Run once a week, "0 0 * * 0".
@daily Run once a day, "0 0 * * *".
@midnight (same as @daily)
@hourly Run once an hour, "0 * * * *".
Please note that startup, as far as @reboot is concerned, is the time when the cron(8) daemon startup.
In particular, it may be before some system daemons, or other facilities, were startup. This is due to
the boot order sequence of the machine.
EXAMPLE CRON FILE
The following lists an example of a user crontab file.
# use /bin/bash to run commands, instead of the default /bin/sh
SHELL=/bin/bash
# mail any output to `paul', no matter whose crontab this is
MAILTO=paul
#
# run five minutes after midnight, every day
5 0 * * * $HOME/bin/daily.job >> $HOME/tmp/out 2>&1
# run at 2:15pm on the first of every month -- output mailed to paul
15 14 1 * * $HOME/bin/monthly
# run at 10 pm on weekdays, annoy Joe
0 22 * * 1-5 mail -s "It's 10pm" joe%Joe,%%Where are your kids?%
23 0-23/2 * * * echo "run 23 minutes after midn, 2am, 4am ..., everyday"
5 4 * * sun echo "run at 5 after 4 every sunday"
# Run on every second Saturday of the month
0 4 8-14 * * test $(date +\%u) -eq 6 && echo "2nd Saturday"
EXAMPLE SYSTEM CRON FILE
The following lists the content of a regular system-wide crontab file. Unlinke a user's crontab, this
file has the username field, as used by /etc/crontab.
# /etc/crontab: system-wide crontab
# Unlike any other crontab you don't have to run the `crontab'
# command to install the new version when you edit this file
# and files in /etc/cron.d. These files also have username fields,
# that none of the other crontabs do.
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
# m h dom mon dow usercommand
17 * * * * root cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
25 6 * * * root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily )
47 6 * * 7 root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly )
52 6 1 * * root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly )
#
SEE ALSO
cron(8), crontab(1)
EXTENSIONS
When specifying day of week, both day 0 and day 7 will be considered Sunday. BSD and AT&T seem to
disagree about this.
Lists and ranges are allowed to co-exist in the same field. "1-3,7-9" would be rejected by AT&T or BSD
cron -- they want to see "1-3" or "7,8,9" ONLY.
Ranges can include "steps", so "1-9/2" is the same as "1,3,5,7,9".
Months or days of the week can be specified by name.
Environment variables can be set in the crontab. In BSD or AT&T, the environment handed to child
processes is basically the one from /etc/rc.
Command output is mailed to the crontab owner (BSD can't do this), can be mailed to a person other than
the crontab owner (SysV can't do this), or the feature can be turned off and no mail will be sent at all
(SysV can't do this either).
All of the `@' commands that can appear in place of the first five fields are extensions.
LIMITATIONS
The cron daemon runs with a defined timezone. It currently does not support per-user timezones. All the
tasks: system's and user's will be run based on the configured timezone. Even if a user specifies the TZ
environment variable in his crontab this will affect only the commands executed in the crontab, not the
execution of the crontab tasks themselves.
The crontab syntax does not make it possible to define all possible periods one could image off. For
example, it is not straightforward to define the last weekday of a month. If a task needs to be run in a
specific period of time that cannot be defined in the crontab syntaxs the best approach would be to have
the program itself check the date and time information and continue execution only if the period matches
the desired one.
If the program itself cannot do the checks then a wrapper script would be required. Useful tools that
could be used for date analysis are ncal or calendar For example, to run a program the last Saturday of
every month you could use the following wrapper code:
0 4 * * Sat [ "$(date +\%e)" = "`ncal | grep $(date +\%a | sed -e 's/.$//') | sed -e 's/^.*\s\([0-9]\+\)\s*$/\1/'`" ] && echo "Last Saturday" && program_to_run
DIAGNOSTICS
cron requires that each entry in a crontab end in a newline character. If the last entry in a crontab is
missing a newline (ie, terminated by EOF), cron will consider the crontab (at least partially) broken. A
warning will be written to syslog.
AUTHOR
Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com> is the author of cron and original creator of this manual page. This page has
also been modified for Debian by Steve Greenland, Javier Fernandez-Sanguino and Christian Kastner.