I would like to automate some services using cron jobs.
When I try to edit the crontab file at /etc/crontab, I am not able to save it as it says that it is read only.
What can I do?
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Yaron
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The Only Smart Boy
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crontab -l to view cron jobs, to edit crontab -e and to delete all cronjobs of a user crontab -r – janasaiarun Oct 18 '18 at 11:13
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You should note that the reason you got an error specifying that the file is read-only is because you are trying to edit a root owned file without being root.
If you want to edit /etc/crontab you should execute your editor as root - (e.g. sudo vi /etc/crontab).
Note that it isn't the recommended way for regular users
The answer in here suggest using crontab -e in order to edit the crontab file.
Note that /usr/bin/crontab is executed as root (set user-id root), and will allow you edit crontab for your own user - the file will be created in this root owned folder /var/spool/cron/crontabs.
If you want to execute crontab services which will run as root You should use sudo in order to became root.
You can either update /etc/crontab directly by using sudo vi /etc/crontab (or use any other text editor) and add a line for your job specifying the user as root...
Or you can run:
sudo crontab -e
Which will edit root's crontab file in /var/spool/cron/crontabs.
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How do I save the crontab I created with sudo crontab -e cause when I create like that and close the terminal, open and write sudo crontab -l it says there are no crontabs for root – The Only Smart Boy Oct 18 '18 at 12:48
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@TheOnlySmartBoy - running `crontab -e` will open your default editor, when you complete writing your crontab rules, you should save the file and exit the editor. You should **NOT** close the terminal at that point. you should first save the file... – Yaron Oct 18 '18 at 13:49
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