crond

CRON(8)                                                                CRON(8)



NAME
       cron - daemon to execute scheduled commands (Vixie Cron)

SYNOPSIS
       cron

DESCRIPTION
       Cron  should  be started from /etc/rc or /etc/rc.local.  It will return
       immediately, so you don't need to start it with '&'.

       Cron searches /var/spool/cron for crontab files which are  named  after
       accounts  in  /etc/passwd; crontabs found are loaded into memory.  Cron
       also searches for /etc/crontab and the files in the /etc/cron.d/ direc-
       tory,  which  are  in  a  different format (see crontab(5)).  Cron then
       wakes up every minute, examining all  stored  crontabs,  checking  each
       command to see if it should be run in the current minute.  When execut-
       ing commands, any output is mailed to the owner of the crontab  (or  to
       the  user  named  in the MAILTO environment variable in the crontab, if
       such exists).

       Additionally, cron checks each minute to see if its  spool  directory's
       modtime  (or  the  modtime on /etc/crontab) has changed, and if it has,
       cron will then examine the modtime on all  crontabs  and  reload  those
       which have changed.  Thus cron need not be restarted whenever a crontab
       file is modified.  Note that the Crontab(1) command updates the modtime
       of the spool directory whenever it changes a crontab.

SEE ALSO
       crontab(1), crontab(5)

AUTHOR
       Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com>



4th Berkeley Distribution      20 December 1993                        CRON(8)