ANACRONTAB(5) File Formats ANACRONTAB(5)
NAME
/etc/anacrontab - configuration file for Anacron
DESCRIPTION
The /etc/anacrontab configuration file describes the jobs controlled by anacron(8). It can contain three
types of lines: job-description lines, environment assignments, or empty lines.
Job-description lines can have the following format:
period in days delay in minutes job-identifier command
The period in days variable specifies the frequency of execution of a job in days. This variable can be rep‐
resented by an integer or a macro (@daily, @weekly, @monthly), where @daily denotes the same value as the
integer 1, @weekly the same as 7, and @monthly specifies that the job is run once a month, independent on the
length of the month.
The delay in minutes variable specifies the number of minutes anacron waits, if necessary, before executing a
job. This variable is represented by an integer where 0 means no delay.
The job-identifier variable specifies a unique name of a job which is used in the log files.
The command variable specifies the command to execute. The command can either be a command such as ls /proc
>> /tmp/proc or a command to execute a custom script.
Environment assignment lines can have the following format:
VAR=VALUE
Any spaces around VAR are removed. No spaces around VALUE are allowed (unless you want them to be part of the
value). The specified assignment takes effect from the next line until the end of the file, or to the next
assignment of the same variable.
The START_HOURS_RANGE variable defines an interval (in hours) when scheduled jobs can be run. In case this
time interval is missed, for example, due to a power down, then scheduled jobs are not executed that day.
The RANDOM_DELAY variable denotes the maximum number of minutes that will be added to the delay in minutes
variable which is specified for each job. A RANDOM_DELAY set to 12 would therefore add, randomly, between 0
and 12 minutes to the delay in minutes for each job in that particular anacrontab. When set to 0, no random
delay is added.
Empty lines are either blank lines, line containing white spaces only, or lines with white spaces followed by
a '#' followed by an arbitrary comment.
You can continue a line onto the next line by adding a '\' at the end of it.
In case you want to disable Anacron, add the 0anacron cron job (which is a part of crontab(1)) into the
/etc/cron.hourly/jobs.deny directory.
EXAMPLE
This example shows how to set up an Anacron job similar in functionality to /etc/crontab which starts all reg‐
ular jobs between 6:00 and 8:00 only. A RANDOM_DELAY which can be 30 minutes at the most is specified. Jobs
will run serialized in a queue where each job is started only after the previous one is finished.
# environment variables
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
The Anacron README file.
AUTHOR
Itai Tzur ⟨[email protected]⟩
Currently maintained by Pascal Hakim ⟨pasc@(debian.org|redellipse.net)⟩.
For Fedora, maintained by Marcela Mašláňová ⟨[email protected]⟩.
cronie 2012-11-22 ANACRONTAB(5)
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