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Is there a way to lines to a user's cron script?

I usually do it using crontab -e, but I would like to automate this task with a shell script.

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1 Answer

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You can echo the line in to the bottom of the current users crontab like this:

#!/bin/bash

line="* * * * * /path/to/command"
(crontab -l; echo "$line" ) | crontab -
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+1 cuz you beat me to it (I had a script error while testing :D ). 1 thing you need to add I think: system needs to be informed that cron was changed. – Rinzwind Aug 25 '11 at 9:42
I knew this would be a race to get answered! You are right in that cron does need to be notified. This is why you can't just echo the command to the end of the crontab. I have tested that the above script does work and cron starts running the command. – Richard Holloway Aug 25 '11 at 9:47
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Oh and I think this also errors out if crontab for that user does not exists yet(?) – Rinzwind Aug 25 '11 at 9:48
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It warns you that users crontab does not exist, if that is the case, but it will then create it. I am upvoting your comments as insightful. – Richard Holloway Aug 25 '11 at 10:08

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