Create and manage Linux cron jobs for a user and for the system using crontab
domain: man7.org · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
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Steps
Edit the current user's crontab interactively: crontab -e — this opens the editor defined by $EDITOR or $VISUAL.
Add a line using the five-field time syntax: 30 2 * * 1 /usr/local/bin/backup.sh (runs at 02:30 every Monday).
Use special strings for common schedules: @daily, @weekly, @monthly, @reboot — these replace the five-field prefix.
System-wide cron jobs go in /etc/cron.d/ as files with a user field added after the time fields: 30 2 * * * root /usr/local/bin/sysbackup.sh
List the current user's crontab: crontab -l; remove it entirely: crontab -r
Known gotchas
Cron runs jobs in a minimal environment; $PATH is typically shorter than in an interactive shell, so use full absolute paths to all executables and files.
Cron does not run jobs for a user whose account is locked or whose shell is set to /sbin/nologin or /bin/false.
Output from cron jobs is mailed to the user by default if MAILTO is not set; add MAILTO="" at the top of the crontab to suppress mail, or redirect stdout/stderr to a log file in each job line.
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