LinuxQuestions.org - Can any one plz explain why/what for cron.d, cron.daily, cron.weekly etc are there.

check this out.

Quote:

/etc/crontab file lists the times to run various cron directories with any files.
/etc/cron.hourly directory listing of hourly files to be run
/etc/cron.daily directory listing of daily files to be run
/etc/cron.weekly directory listing of weekly files to be run
/etc/cron.monthly directory listing of monthly files to be run
/etc/cron.allow file list of users allowed to use crontab (not always present)
/etc/cron.deny file list of users denied to use crontab (not always present)

The locations above are where you put your file to be run. Like a daily script to be run goes into the /etc/cron.daily directory. And a monthly file to the monthly directory (/etc/cron.monthly).

Quote:

Configuring a Cron Task

The main configuration file for cron, /etc/crontab, contains the following lines:

SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root
HOME=/

# run-parts
01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily
22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly

The first four lines are variables used to configure the environment in which the cron tasks are run. The value of the SHELL variable tells the system which shell environment to use (in this example the bash shell), and the PATH variable defines the path used to execute commands. The output of the cron tasks are emailed to the username defined with the MAILTO variable. If the MAILTO variable is defined as an empty string (MAILTO=""), email will not be sent. The HOME variable can be used to set the home directory to use when executing commands or scripts.

Each line in the /etc/crontab file has the format:

minute hour day month dayofweek command

*

minute — any integer from 0 to 59
*

hour — any integer from 0 to 23
*

day — any integer from 1 to 31 (must be a valid day if a month is specified)
*

month — any integer from 1 to 12 (or the short name of the month such as jan, feb, and so on)
*

dayofweek — any integer from 0 to 7 where 0 or 7 represents Sunday (or the short name of the week such as sun, mon, and so on)
*

command — the command to execute. The command can either be a command such as ls /proc >> /tmp/proc or the command to execute a custom script that you wrote.

For any of the above values, an asterisk (*) can be used to specify all valid values. For example, an asterisk for the month value means execute the command every month within the constraints of the other values.

A hyphen (-) between integers specifies a range of integers. For example, 1-4 means the integers 1, 2, 3, and 4.

A list of values separated by commas (,) specifies a list. For example, 3, 4, 6, 8 indicates those four specific integers.

The forward slash (/) can be used to specify step values. The value of an integer can be skipped within a range by following the range with /<integer>. For example, 0-59/2 can be used to define every other minute in the minute field. Step values can also be used with an asterisk. For instance, the value */3 can be used in the month field to run the task every third month.

Any lines that begin with a hash mark (#) are comments and are not processed.