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Xiong Chiamiov
Asked: 2011-08-03 21:24:08 +0800 CST

Programmatically add entry to user's crontab

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I need to add a line to a user's crontab file. Normally, I would do this with crontab -e, but I want to do it with a provisioning script.

Any clever methods?

linux cron

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    How about:

    (crontab -u USERNAME -l ; echo "line to be added") | crontab -u USERNAME -

    ...or (although directly editing crontab files is not recommended):

    echo "line to be added" >> /var/spool/cron/crontabs/USERNAME

    (Assuming your provisioning script is running as root.)

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  2. There are a few ways

    This will work if you want the user to edit it

    echo "normal crontab line here" >> /var/spool/cron/user

    If you don't want the user to edit it.. I'd drop a file into /etc/cron.d that is like

    0 0 * * * username /path/to/file

    You can call it whatever you want.

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  3. Coming back to this years later, if you find yourself in this sort of situation, you should take a very close look at configuration management tools. In particular, Ansible is a great option that fits into existing infrastructure easily, and has a nice cron module.

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  4. You could directly add new crons (if you have root privileges). you can also specify the run-as user.

    /etc/cron.d/filename

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