CRONTAB???

[Convert]

I have been reading many references on this forum to crontab... what the heck is crontab.

How can crontab help me?

Crontab is a funny word... especially if you say it out loud more than 11 times... try it.

[trekker]

A crontab file contains instructions to the cron daemon. Essentially, what it does is tell the cron daemon to run this command at this time on this date.

It is used to schedule recurring jobs. Each user has its own crontab. You can get a listing of the cron jobs with "crontab -l". To edit, use "crontab -e". To submit a cron job, "crontab crontabfilename".

If you are the root, you can set up cron jobs for any user with "crontab -u username crontabfilename".

There are many resources around on how to write a crontab file. It's not too difficult.

Hope this helps.

[Ryeker]

In addition to trekker's fantastic response, here's how to use cron:
http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/misc/scheduling.html