1CRON(8)                      System Administration                     CRON(8)
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NAME

6       crond - daemon to execute scheduled commands
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SYNOPSIS

9       crond [-c | -h | -i | -n | -p | -P | -s | -m<mailcommand>]
10       crond -x [ext,sch,proc,pars,load,misc,test,bit]
11       crond -V
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DESCRIPTION

14       Cron  is  started  from  /etc/rc.d/init.d or /etc/init.d when classical
15       sysvinit scripts are used. In case systemd is enabled, then  unit  file
16       is  installed  into  /lib/systemd/system/crond.service  and  daemon  is
17       started by systemctl start crond.service command.  It  returns  immedi‐
18       ately,  thus, there is no need to need to start it with the '&' parame‐
19       ter.
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21       Cron searches /var/spool/cron for crontab files which are  named  after
22       accounts in /etc/passwd; The found crontabs are loaded into the memory.
23       Cron also searches for /etc/anacrontab and any files in the /etc/cron.d
24       directory,  which have a different format (see crontab(5)).  Cron exam‐
25       ines all stored crontabs and checks each job to see if it needs  to  be
26       run  in  the  current  minute.   When executing commands, any output is
27       mailed to the owner of the crontab (or to the  user  specified  in  the
28       MAILTO  environment  variable in the crontab, if such exists).  Any job
29       output can also be sent to syslog by using the -s option.
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31       There are two ways how changes in crontables are  checked.   The  first
32       method  is  checking the modtime of a file.  The second method is using
33       the inotify support.  Using of inotify is logged in  the  /var/log/cron
34       log  after  the  daemon  is  started.   The  inotify support checks for
35       changes in all crontables and accesses the hard disk only when a change
36       is detected.
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38       When  using  the  modtime  option, Cron checks its crontables' modtimes
39       every minute to check for any changes and reloads the crontables  which
40       have  changed.   There  is  no  need  to restart Cron after some of the
41       crontables were modified.  The modtime option is also used when inotify
42       can not be initialized.
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44       Cron checks these files and directories:
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46       /etc/crontab
47              system  crontab.  Nowadays the file is empty by default.  Origi‐
48              nally it was usually used to run daily,  weekly,  monthly  jobs.
49              By  default  these  jobs are now run through anacron which reads
50              /etc/anacrontab configuration file.  See anacrontab(5) for  more
51              details.
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53       /etc/cron.d/
54              directory  that  contains  system  cronjobs stored for different
55              users.
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57       /var/spool/cron
58              directory that contains user crontables created by  the  crontab
59              command.
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61       Note  that  the  crontab(1)  command  updates  the modtime of the spool
62       directory whenever it changes a crontab.
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64   Daylight Saving Time and other time changes
65       Local time changes of less than three hours, such as  those  caused  by
66       the  Daylight  Saving Time changes, are handled in a special way.  This
67       only applies to jobs that run at a specific time and jobs that run with
68       a granularity greater than one hour.  Jobs that run more frequently are
69       scheduled normally.
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71       If time was adjusted one hour forward, those jobs that would  have  run
72       in  the  interval  that has been skipped will be run immediately.  Con‐
73       versely, if time was adjusted backward, running the same job  twice  is
74       avoided.
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76       Time  changes  of more than 3 hours are considered to be corrections to
77       the clock or the timezone, and the new time is used immediately.
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79       It is possible  to  use  different  time  zones  for  crontables.   See
80       crontab(5) for more information.
81
82   PAM Access Control
83       Cron  supports access control with PAM if the system has PAM installed.
84       For more information, see pam(8).  A PAM configuration file  for  crond
85       is installed in /etc/pam.d/crond.  The daemon loads the PAM environment
86       from the pam_env module.  This can be overridden by  defining  specific
87       settings in the appropriate crontab file.
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OPTIONS

90       -h     Prints a help message and exits.
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92       -i     Disables inotify support.
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94       -m     This  option  allows  you  to specify a shell command to use for
95              sending Cron mail output instead of using sendmail(8) This  com‐
96              mand  must  accept a fully formatted mail message (with headers)
97              on standard input and send it as a mail message to  the  recipi‐
98              ents  specified  in the mail headers.  Specifying the string off
99              (i.e., crond -m off) will disable the sending of mail.
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101       -n     Tells the daemon to run in the foreground.  This can  be  useful
102              when  starting  it  out  of  init. With this option is needed to
103              change  pam   setting.    /etc/pam.d/crond   must   not   enable
104              pam_loginuid.so module.
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106       -p     Allows Cron to accept any user set crontables.
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108       -P     Don't set PATH.  PATH is instead inherited from the environment.
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110       -c     This option enables clustering support, as described below.
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112       -s     This  option will direct Cron to send the job output to the sys‐
113              tem log using syslog(3).  This is useful if your system does not
114              have sendmail(8), installed or if mail is disabled.
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116       -x     This option allows you to set debug flags.
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118       -V     Print version and exit.
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SIGNALS

121       When  the SIGHUP is received, the Cron daemon will close and reopen its
122       log file.  This proves to be useful in scripts which rotate and age log
123       files.   Naturally,  this is not relevant if Cron was built to use sys‐
124       log(3).
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CLUSTERING SUPPORT

127       In this version of Cron it is possible to use a network-mounted  shared
128       /var/spool/cron  across a cluster of hosts and specify that only one of
129       the hosts should run the crontab jobs in  this  directory  at  any  one
130       time.   This  is done by starting Cron with the -c option, and have the
131       /var/spool/cron/.cron.hostname file contain just one line, which repre‐
132       sents  the  hostname  of  whichever  host in the cluster should run the
133       jobs.  If this file does not exist, or the  hostname  in  it  does  not
134       match  that  returned by gethostname(2), then all crontab files in this
135       directory are ignored.  This has no effect on cron  jobs  specified  in
136       the  /etc/crontab file or on files in the /etc/cron.d directory.  These
137       files are always run and considered host-specific.
138
139       Rather than editing /var/spool/cron/.cron.hostname directly, use the -n
140       option of crontab(1) to specify the host.
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142       You should ensure that all hosts in a cluster, and the file server from
143       which they mount the shared crontab directory,  have  closely  synchro‐
144       nised  clocks,  e.g., using ntpd(8), otherwise the results will be very
145       unpredictable.
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147       Using cluster sharing automatically disables inotify  support,  because
148       inotify cannot be relied on with network-mounted shared file systems.
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CAVEATS

151       All  crontab  files  have  to  be  regular files or symlinks to regular
152       files, they must not be executable or writable for anyone else but  the
153       owner.   This  requirement  can be overridden by using the -p option on
154       the crond command line.  If inotify support is in use, changes  in  the
155       symlinked  crontabs  are  not automatically noticed by the cron daemon.
156       The cron daemon must receive a SIGHUP signal to  reload  the  crontabs.
157       This is a limitation of the inotify API.
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159       The  syslog  output  will be used instead of mail, when sendmail is not
160       installed.
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SEE ALSO

163       crontab(1), crontab(5), inotify(7), pam(8)
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AUTHOR

166       Paul Vixie ⟨vixie@isc.org⟩
167       Marcela Mašláňová ⟨mmaslano@redhat.com⟩
168       Colin Dean ⟨colin@colin-dean.org⟩
169       Tomáš Mráz ⟨tmraz@fedoraproject.org⟩
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173cronie                            2013-09-26                           CRON(8)
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