Newbie crontab question

[danatural]

Hello all,

can anyone tell me how to edit a crontab? I know the edit command is crontab -e... but once I'm in where do I go from there?

Thanks in advance.

 

[d3funct]

Once you've typed crontab -e you will need to edit with 'vi' commands, so you might want to do a google search for "vi quick reference". An infinite number of monkey typing at an infinite number of keyboards will eventually populate the internet.

 

[bi]

danatural,

Here is something I have found handy when adding something to cron -- a "cheat sheet" on which field is for which time unit. I've actually added the first 6 lines below to the top of my crontab and I show a sample command.

# minute (0-59)
# | hour (0-23)
# | | day of the month (1-31)
# | | | month of the year (1-12)
# | | | | day of the week (0-6 with 0=Sunday)
# / / / / / commands
0 3 * * * /usr/sbin/skulker

Also, if you don't want to get an email everytime the command is run from cron, add this after the command:

>> /dev/null 2>&1

 

[danatural]

Hi
Thanks so much. I'm learning more and more everyday I read and get advise from all of you.

Take it easy.

 

[andrero]

don't forget to specify the complete path off the command