ANACRONTAB(5)		     Cronie Users' Manual		 ANACRONTAB(5)



NAME
       crontab - tables for driving cron (ISC Cron V4.1)

DESCRIPTION
       A  crontab file contains instructions to the cron(8) daemon of the gen-
       eral 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 pound-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, com-
       ments are not allowed on the same line  as  environment	variable  set-
       tings.

       An  active line in a crontab will be either an environment setting or a
       cron command.  An environment setting is of the form,

	   name = value

       where the spaces around the equal-sign (=) are optional, and any subse-
       quent 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.

       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.  HOME and SHELL may be over-
       ridden by settings in the crontab; LOGNAME may not.

       (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.  If MAILTO is defined but empty (MAILTO=""), no mail
       will  be	 sent.	 Otherwise  mail  is sent to the owner of the crontab.
       This  option  is	 useful	 if  you  decide  on  /bin/mail	  instead   of
       /usr/lib/sendmail  as  your  mailer  when you install cron -- /bin/mail
       doesn't do aliasing, and UUCP usually doesn't read its mail.  If	 MAIL-
       FROM is defined (and non-empty), it will be used as the envelope sender
       address, otherwise, ``root'' will be used.

       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  CRON_TZ  specifies the time zone specific for the cron table. User
       type into the chosen table times in the	time  of  the  specified  time
       zone.  The  time	 into  log is taken from local time zone, where is the
       daemon running.

       The MLS_LEVEL environment variable provides support for	multiple  per-
       job  SELinux  security  contexts in the same crontab.  By default, cron
       jobs execute with the default SELinux security context of the user that
       created	the  crontab  file.   When  using multiple security levels and
       roles, this may not be sufficient, because the same user may be running
       in  a  different role or at a different security level.	For more about
       roles and SELinux MLS/MCS see  selinux(8)  and  undermentioned  crontab
       example.	  You can set MLS_LEVEL to the SELinux security context string
       specifying the SELinux security context in which you want  the  job  to
       run,  and  crond will set the execution context of the or jobs to which
       the  setting  applies  to  the  specified  context.    See   also   the
       crontab(1) -s option.

       The RANDOM_DELAY variable allows delaying job startups by random amount
       of minutes with upper limit specified by the variable. The random scal-
       ing  factor  is determined during the cron daemon startup so it remains
       constant for the whole run time of the daemon.

       If the CRON_CORRECT_MAIL_HEADER environment variable is present regard-
       less of its value, it will make crond to send e-mails with RFC2822 com-
       pliant From field. (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 only)

       The format of a cron command is very much the V7 standard, with a  num-
       ber  of upward-compatible extensions.  Each line has five time and date
       fields, followed by a user name if this is  the	system	crontab	 file,
       followed	 by  a	command.   Commands  are  executed by cron(8) when the
       minute, hour, and month of year fields match the current time,  and  at
       least  one  of  the two day fields (day of month, or day of week) match
       the current time (see "Note" below).  Note that this  means  that  non-
       existent times, such as "missing hours" during daylight savings conver-
       sion, will never match, causing	jobs  scheduled	 during	 the  "missing
       times"  not  to	be  run.   Similarly,  times that occur more than once
       (again, during daylight savings conversion) will cause matching jobs to
       be run twice.

       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 cronfile.	 Percent-signs	(%)  in	 the  command,
       unless escaped with backslash (\), will be changed into newline charac-
       ters, and all data after the first % will be sent  to  the  command  as
       standard input.

       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  (ie,
       aren't  *),  the command will be run when either field matches the cur-
       rent 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.

EXAMPLE CRON FILE
       # use /bin/sh to run commands, no matter what /etc/passwd says
       SHELL=/bin/sh
       # mail any output to `paul', no matter whose crontab this is
       MAILTO=paul
       #
       CRON_TZ=Japan
       # 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"

Jobs in /etc/cron.d/
       The  jobs  in  cron.d  are system jobs, which are used usually for more
       than one user. That's the reason why is name of the user needed. MAILTO
       on the first line is optional.

EXAMPLE FOR JOB IN /etc/cron.d/job
       #login as root
       #create job with preferred editor (e.g. vim)
       MAILTO=root
       * * * * * root touch /tmp/file

SELinux with multi level security (MLS)
       In crontab is important specified security level by crontab -s or spec-
       ifying the required level on the first line of the crontab. Each	 level
       is specified in /etc/selinux/targeted/seusers. For using crontab in MLS
       mode is really important:
       - check/change actual role,
       - set correct role for directory, which is used for input/output.

EXAMPLE FOR SELINUX MLS
       # login as root
       newrole -r sysadm_r
       mkdir /tmp/SystemHigh
       chcon -l SystemHigh /tmp/SystemHigh
       crontab -e
       # write in crontab file
       MLS_LEVEL=SystemHigh
       0-59 * * * * id -Z > /tmp/SystemHigh/crontest
       When I log in as a normal user, it can't work, because /tmp/SystemHigh is
       higher than my level.

FILES
       /etc/anacrontab system crontab file for jobs like  cron.daily,  weekly,
       monthly.	  /var/spool/cron/  usual  place  for  storing	users crontab.
       /etc/cron.d/ stored system crontables.

SEE ALSO
       cron(8), crontab(1)

EXTENSIONS
       When specifying day of week, both day 0 and day 7  will	be  considered
       Sunday.	BSD and ATT 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 ATT 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".

       Names of months or days of the week can be specified by name.

       Environment  variables  can  be set in the crontab.  In BSD or ATT, 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).

       These special  time  specification  "nicknames"	are  supported,	 which
       replace the 5 initial time and date fields, and are prefixed by the '@'
       character:
       @reboot	  :    Run once after reboot.
       @yearly	  :    Run once a year, ie.  "0 0 1 1 *".
       @annually  :    Run once a year, ie.  "0 0 1 1 *".
       @monthly	  :    Run once a month, ie. "0 0 1 * *".
       @weekly	  :    Run once a week, ie.  "0 0 * * 0".
       @daily	  :    Run once a day, ie.   "0 0 * * *".
       @hourly	  :    Run once an hour, ie. "0 * * * *".

CAVEATS
       The crontab files have to be  regular  files  or	 symlinks  to  regular
       files,  they must not be executable or writable by anyone else than the
       owner.  This requirement can be overridden by using the	-p  option  on
       the  crond  command  line.  If inotify support is in use changes in the
       symlinked crontabs are not automatically noticed by  the	 cron  daemon.
       The  cron daemon must receive a SIGHUP to reload the crontabs.  This is
       a limitation of inotify API.


AUTHOR
       Paul Vixie <vixie@isc.org>



Marcela Malaova			 20 July 2009			 ANACRONTAB(5)