restarting default cron job and adding more commands

Question

This question has two parts. Firstly, I noticed that Webfaction sets up a cron job to start the apache server every 20 minutes with:

0,20,40 * * * * ~/webapps/django/apache2/bin/start

I accidentally removed it with crontab -r and would like to add it back to the cron table. I could not find a crontab txt file for this cron job command. Is there one somewhere or should I just create my own? What I really wanted to do was add my own crontab to the existing list but I noticed that if I make my own apache crontab as above and run it with crontab my_apache_crontab.txt and then run crontab my_custom_crontab.txt the later crontab replaces the former one instead of just appending it to a list of cron jobs. How can I add additional cron jobs to the list without removing existing cron jobs?

Accepted Answer

0

You need to use: crontab -e to edit your crontab. You will overwrite it using the method you mentioned.

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answered 11 Dec '13, 18:47

bmeyer71 ♦♦
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accept rate: 33%

Interestingly, if there are no cron jobs queued, adding one with crontab -e doesn't work. If I first use crontab my_crontab_filt.txt to add one, the newly added cron job runs. Adding subsequent cron jobs with crontab -e then works.

(14 Dec '13, 14:20) Roland

Adding a new entry using crontab -e should work on an empty crontab. You can add:

2>&1 >> /home/username/cron.log

to the end of the command to redirect any errors/output to a log file. That should help to determine what is happening.

(14 Dec '13, 16:46) bmeyer71 ♦♦

restarting default cron job and adding more commands

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