Re: [vox-tech] Cron Confusion

[Peter Jay Salzman <p@belial.ucMAPSdavis.edu>]

as i understand things...

1. cron is started with one of the startup scripts in /etc/init.d.

2. cron looks in /var/spool/cron/crontabs for crontab files.

3. cron looks in /etc/crontab for cron jobs and when they're to run.  very
   often, these are things like /etc/cron.daily/, /etc/cron.weekly/, etc.

4. debian's cron also looks in /etc/cron.d.

peter


On Wed, 29 Nov 2000, Robert G. Scofield wrote:

> Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 23:08:22 -0800
> From: Robert G. Scofield <rgscofield@ucdavis.edu>
> Reply-To: vox-tech@lists.mother.com
> To: Vox-Tech <vox-tech@lists.lugod.org>
> Subject: [vox-tech] Cron Confusion
> 
> I'm sorry to be so vague in this request for help.  Here's the story.  I
> once complained that my files in /var/log were getting so big,
> especially "messages."  Someone said that Red Hat had a program to deal
> with this problem.  He said it was a cron job.  Apparently he discovered
> that my cron job was scheduled to be done at around 4 in the morning on
> Sundays when my computer is off.  So, he changed a file so that the cron
> job would run at 3:00 Sunday afternoon.
> 
> On Sundays now  the cron job generates new files in /var/log.  So,
> instead of just "messages" I get "messages.1" and "messages.2" etc.
> Every once in awhile I go in and remove all of the files that have
> numbers for extensions.  (Though after reading about logrotate I suspect
> that these files will be automatically deleted by some cron job.)
> 
> Here's the problem.  I'd like to find the cron file that was modified so
> that I can study it, and learn how to schedule the cron job for a
> different time.   But I can't find it anywhere.  The command crontab -l
> gives me the message that I have no crontab.  I can't find anything in
> the following directories that look like the cron file that was
> modified:  cron.d, cron.daily, cron.hourly, cron.monthly, cron.weekly,
> crontab.  Does anyone know where I might find this cron job file?