Tasks automatisation: the cron daemon

Crontab Editing

• You should not edit by hand /etc/crontab. This system wide file may not even exist (on Gentoo it does not exist for example). Instead use

crontab -e u username

This will edit the user crontab, and ensure that changes are notified to the crond daemon.

Crontab Debugging

• When debugging crontab scripts, *make sure* that the script runs OK first. Run it as it would be loaded from the crontab daemon, and verify that no problems occur.