AIX - CRONTAB

CRONTAB:

The cron daemon, which translates to Chronological Data Event Monitor, is a program that schedules jobs to run automatically at a specific time and date. The /etc/inittab file contains all the AIX startup programs, including the cron daemon. The init process in AIX starts the cron daemon, or cron, from the inittab file during the initialization process of the operating system.

You can submit jobs, or events, to cron by doing one of the following:
Use the at and batch facilities to submit jobs for one-time execution.
Use the crontab files to execute jobs at regularly scheduled intervals (hourly, daily, weekly, and so on).

By default, cron can concurrently run 100 events of equal importance. The /usr/adm/cron/queuedefs file allows you to change this schedule.

c.200j10n120w
| |    |   |
| |    |   wait period (in seconds)
| |    nice value
| jobs
cron

At regularly scheduled intervals, cron looks for and reads the crontab files that are located in the directory /var/spool/cron/crontabs.

These files contain jobs submitted by users. For example, the file /var/spool/cron/crontabs/john contains John's jobs that are scheduled to be run by cron. The files in this directory are named for the individual users. When changes are made to the files, the cron daemon must be notified to reread the files. If you open crontab with "ccrontab -e" and after quit, crontab daemon will be notified an re-reads that file.

/var/spool/cron/crontabs   users`s crontab files are located here
/var/adm/cron/log          cron daemon creates a log of its activities
/var/adm/cron/cron.deny    Any user can use cron except those listed in this file
/var/adm/cron/cron.allow   Only users listed in this file can use cron (root user included)

crontab -l                 Lists the contents of your current crontab file
crontab -e                 Edits your current crontab file (when the file saved, the cron daemon is automatically refreshed.)
crontab -r                 Removes your crontab file from the crontab directory
crontab -v                 check crontab submission time
crontab mycronfile         submit your crontab file to /var/spool/cron/crontabs directory

crontab file format:
minute    hour    day_of_month    month        weekday        command
0-59      0-23    1-31            1-12        0-6 Sun-Sat     shell command

* * * * * /bin/script.sh        schedule a job to run every minute
0 1 15 * * /fullbackup          1 am on the 15th of every month
0 0 * * 1-5 /usr/sbin/backup    start the backup command at midnight, Mo - Fr
0,15,30,45 6-17 * * 1-5 /home/script1                                     execute script1 every 15 minutes between 6AM and 5PM, Mo - Fr
0 1 1 * * /tmp -name 'TRACE*' -mtime +270 -exec rm {} \\; >/dev/null 2>&1 it will delete files older than 9 months
                                                                          (\\; <-- double "\" needed because to interpret ";" correctly)
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Ctontab: Adding and Removing lines with script:

To add a line to cron (in this example "0 1 * * * /tmp/test.sh >> /tmp/test.log")
crontab -l | awk '{print} END {print "0 1 * * * /tmp/test.sh >> /tmp/test.log"}' | crontab

To remove an line from cron (in this example any lines that match "/tmp/test.sh >> /tmp/test.log")
crontab -l | sed '\!/tmp/test.sh >> /tmp/test.log!d' | crontab

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AT:

at                          submits a job for cron to run at a specific time in the future
                            (at -f /home/root/bb_at -t 2007122503)
echo "<command>" | at now   this starts in the background (and you can log off)

at now +2 mins
banner hello > /dev/pts/0
<ctrl-d>                    (at now + 1 minute,at 5 pm Friday )


/var/adm/cron/at.deny       allows any users except those listed in this file to use the at command.
/var/adm/cron/at.allow      allows only those users listed in this file to use the at command (including root).
at -l                       Lists at jobs
atq [user]                  Views other user's jobs (Only root can use this command.)
at -r                       Cancels an at job
atrm job                    Cancels an at job by job number
atrm user                   Cancels an at job by the user (root can use it for any user; users can cancel their jobs.)
atrm                        Cancels all at jobs belonging to the user invoking the atrm command

batch                       submits a job to be run in the background when the processor load is low