Reference: https://opensource.com/article/17/11/how-use-cron-linux
- The crond daemon is the background service that enables cron functionality.
- The cron service checks for files in the /var/spool/cron and /etc/cron.d directories and the /etc/anacrontab file. The contents of these files define cron jobs that are to be run at various intervals. The individual user cron files are located in /var/spool/cron, and system services and applications generally add cron job files in the /etc/cron.d directory. The /etc/anacrontab is a special case that will be covered later in this article.
- The cron utility runs based on commands specified in a cron table (crontab). Each user, including root, can have a cron file. These files don’t exist by default, but can be created in the /var/spool/cron directory using the crontab -e command that’s also used to edit a cron file (see the script below). I strongly recommend that you not use a standard editor (such as Vi, Vim, Emacs, Nano, or any of the many other editors that are available). Using the crontab command not only allows you to edit the command, it also restarts the crond daemon when you save and exit the editor. The crontab command uses Vi as its underlying editor, because Vi is always present (on even the most basic of installations).
- to prevent possible misuse, the sysadmin can limit user access by creating a /etc/cron.allow file that contains a list of all users with permission to create cron jobs. The root user cannot be prevented from using cron.