System crontab

[Thomas Cameron]

On 07/30/2010 12:11 AM, keith smith wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I have been setting up a cron job and found out there are two different
> crons. 1) the user cron located at /var/spool/cron/ on my Fedora Box and
> 2) the system crontab located at /etc/crontab .
>
> When I do the crontab -e (if I am recalling correctly) I am editing the
> user crontab.
>
> To edit the system crontab do I just use VI or some other editor?
>
> I would have thought if I were root and issued crontab -e I would have
> been editing the system crontab, however this was not my experience.
>
> Thanks in advance for your insight.

If it's a Red Hat-ish box, use /etc/cron.hourly, /etc/cron.daily, 
/etc/cron.weekly and /etc/cron.monthly.  Create a script, make it 
executable, and copy it into one of those directories.

You should never need to edit /etc/crontab.  For individuals (including 
root), crontab -e or crontab -r will do what you want.

TC