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shantanuo
Asked: 2011-10-03 20:47:24 +0800 CST

crontab file of a deleted user

  • 772

After removing the user, does the crontab added by that user gets removed as well? I am asking this because I can see a user file called "abcuser" in the 

/var/spool/cron/

When I cat the file, I can see the crons added by that user. The user no longer exist and the cron's won't work. But why does the crontab file is still there?

cron useradd

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    By default, userdel doesn't remove the user's cron, at, and print jobs. To do it, uncomment the following line in /etc/login.defs:

    USERDEL_CMD /usr/sbin/userdel_local

    Here is an example of userdel_local script:

    #! /bin/sh

if [ $# != 1 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 username"
    exit 1
fi

crontab -r -u $1

    So, whenever you execute userdel, any cron jobs owned by the user will be remove.

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