Where is the users crontab located?

A test file with entries should be in /var/spool/cron by user name.

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If you want to create or edit a cron job as user, in a terminal as user issue the command

It will open the file for editing. Here's a good description of the process.

Where the crontab files are stored can vary with the distribution, but it's normally somewhere in /etc. You can use the locate command to find the files on your distro. Taking a look at man crontab and man cron can also help for your distro.

Edit: Thanks, yancek!

1 members found this post helpful.

Hey thanks so much guys! I appreciate it.

Two more things:

crontab -e fires up your favorite editor. By default that is vi/vim. If that happens not to be your favorite editor: you quit that with ESC-:q!. People have been resetting their computer because they could not think of something that obvious.

If you want a different editor, like nano, issue this command:
Or you can edit that in your ~/.bashrc.

Second, the 'e' happens to be next to the 'r' on your keyboard. When you accidently hit crontab -r instead of crontab -e your crontab is wiped out. Very convenient.

And no, I don't make backups of my clients, only servers.

jlinkels

To get out of vi/vim, use ' Esc :q! '
Using the 'w' will write whatever cr*p you managed to type first into the crontab; not what you want.

Yes, you're right! Stupid mistake!

jlinkels