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Old Geezer
Asked: 2019-10-29 20:21:25 +0800 CST

How to locate the cron file entry for a scheduled task?

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I have an old Ubuntu system. crontab -l shows that a particular job is running every 30 minutes:

# m h  dom mon dow   command
30 * * * * ~/scripts/ferc.sh

However, I am unable to find this line in /etc/crontab or any file in all of the /etc/cron.* folders.

Where else can cron configuration be kept?

cron

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    User crontabs are on /var/spool/cron/crontabs/$USER

    For all cron jobs that should be executed under a user's account, you should use crontab -e.

    The -e option is used to edit the current crontab using the editor specified by the VISUAL or EDITOR environment variables. After you exit from the editor, the modified crontab will be installed automatically. If neither of the environment variables is defined, then the default editor /usr/bin/editor is used.

    More at cron and crontab man pages.

    Change the default editor with sudo update-alternatives --config editor. For just one time you can run for e.g. EDITOR=vim crontab -e.

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