Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 3 Jul 2003 15:03:47 -0700
From:      Rich Morin <rdm@cfcl.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: format of /etc/crontab?
Message-ID:  <p05200f46bb2a5721bf2b@[192.168.254.205]>
In-Reply-To: <20030703212325.GA5665@mail.it.ca>
References:  <p05200f42bb2a44de7749@[192.168.254.205]> <20030703212325.GA5665@mail.it.ca>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
At 5:23 PM -0400 7/3/03, Paul Chvostek wrote:
>The /etc/crontab is largely self-documenting.  It is similar to the
>format of the other crontab files, and includes a comment line:
>
>#minute hour    mday    month   wday    who     command
>
>What further information do you need?

None, in the file itself, but the crontab(5) man page should be tweaked.
I have posted the following suggestion (to freebsd-doc@freebsd.org):

   The ``sixth'' field (the rest of the line) specifies the command to be ...
   ---
   In the case of /etc/crontab, another field (username) follows the time
   and date fields.  This is normally set to root, but other names can be
   specified; the command will be setuid(2) to the corresponding uid.

   The ``final'' field (the rest of the line) specifies the command to be ...

The user shouldn't be required to spot the added "who" field in the comment,
let alone read the source code to determine that no other format changes
have been made.  The man pages promise to (and should) describe any format
differences.

-r
-- 
email: rdm@cfcl.com; phone: +1 650-873-7841
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm    - my home page, resume, etc.
http://www.cfcl.com/Meta   - The FreeBSD Browser, Meta Project, etc.
http://www.ptf.com/dossier - Prime Time Freeware's DOSSIER series



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?p05200f46bb2a5721bf2b>