14

when I write crontab -e command in terminal,

I get this error message:

no crontab for root - using an empty one 888

I don't know what '888' is meaning?

Config file of crontab /etc/crontab:

# /etc/crontab: system-wide crontab
# Unlike any other crontab you don't have to run the `crontab'
# command to install the new version when you edit this file
# and files in /etc/cron.d. These files also have username fields,
# that none of the other crontabs do.

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

# m h dom mon dow user  command
58 * * * * root cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
52 0 * * * root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily )
46 0 * * 7 root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly )
9 5 28 * * root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly )
#

Please help me.

Thanks.

1

2 Answers 2

10

Your crontab editor has been switched to ed. To exit ed, press Q and subsequently Enter. This will quit the ed editor.

If you would like to change your crontab editor back to nano use:

sudo select-editor

This also might be helpful:

EDITOR=nano crontab -e
0
9

That's the number of characters in the default file. Ubuntu creates an 'empty' crontab file with a lot of comments showing how to use it.

crontab -e 
# Edit this file to introduce tasks to be run by cron.
#
# Each task to run has to be defined through a single line
# indicating with different fields when the task will be run
# and what command to run for the task
#
# To define the time you can provide concrete values for
# minute (m), hour (h), day of month (dom), month (mon),
# and day of week (dow) or use '*' in these fields (for 'any').#
# Notice that tasks will be started based on the cron's system
# daemon's notion of time and timezones.
#
# Output of the crontab jobs (including errors) is sent through
# email to the user the crontab file belongs to (unless redirected).
#
# For example, you can run a backup of all your user accounts
# at 5 a.m every week with:
# 0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/
#
# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)
#
# m h  dom mon dow   command
"/tmp/crontab.vILdXR/crontab" 22L, 888C
1
  • @lain I can't open this file ?
    – Gex
    Feb 12, 2014 at 19:24

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