[oclug] rsync, ssh, and cron

[Matthew Wilcox]

On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 11:25:31PM -0400, Michael P. Soulier wrote:
> On 07/04/04 Dave Edwards did speaketh:
> > I think we must be talking at each other.  That man page doesn't have
> > anything to say about /etc/cron.d; it mentions /etc/passwd twice and
> > /etc/crontab once.
> 
> Apparently, the crond(8) manpage references the crontab(5) manpage for
> information about the special format of those files, but that referenced
> manpage says nothing about it. Lovely. 

Does so!

       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 command, followed by a newline character (’\n’).
       The system crontab (/etc/crontab) uses the same format, except that the
       username  for  the  command is specified after the time and date fields
       and before the command. The fields may be separated by spaces or  tabs.
       Note  that  if the line does not have a trailing newline character, the
       entire line will be silently ignored by both crontab and cron; the com‐
       mand will never be executed.


Now, it doesn't mention /etc/cron.d/  at all, but this is mentioned in cron(8):

       cron also reads /etc/crontab, which is in a slightly  different  format
       (see  crontab(5)).   Additionally, cron reads the files in /etc/cron.d:
       it treats the files in /etc/cron.d as extensions  to  the  /etc/crontab
       file  (they  follow  the special format of that file, i.e. they include
       the user field).


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