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/ directory, 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 executing commands, any output is mailed to the owner
             of  the  crontab (or to the user named in the MAILTO envi-
             ronment 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 mod-
             ified.   Note that the Crontab(1) command updates the mod-
             time of the spool directory whenever it changes a crontab.

      SEE ALSO
             crontab(1), crontab(5)

      AUTHOR
             Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com>

                               20 December 1993                       1

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      crontab.org is maintained by Ilya Sukhar