Ubuntu 9.04: Location Of User's Crontab File

Ubuntu 9.04: Location Of User's Crontab File
Post Date:	May 14, 2009	Posted By:	Admin	Category:	Linux
The location of a user's crontab file, in Linux, varies from distribution to distribution. It can even vary in different releases of a distribution. In Ubuntu (and variants) for release 9.04 the location is; /var/spool/cron/crontabs The user's crontab will be titled by the user's name. Knowing this is all well and good, but one can't just view the directory with a GUI or from CLI. The default permission settings prevent anyone but the root user from viewing the content of the above directory. We could simply change the permissions, but I believe that would open a security hole. I've worked around it by assigning a password to the root user (Ubuntu doesn't assign one during install). Then execute "su -" to switch to the root user.

Post Date:

May 14, 2009

Posted By:

Admin

Category:

Linux

The location of a user's crontab file, in Linux, varies from distribution to distribution. It can even vary in different releases of a distribution. In Ubuntu (and variants) for release 9.04 the location is;

/var/spool/cron/crontabs

The user's crontab will be titled by the user's name.

Knowing this is all well and good, but one can't just view the directory with a GUI or from CLI. The default permission settings prevent anyone but the root user from viewing the content of the above directory. We could simply change the permissions, but I believe that would open a security hole. I've worked around it by assigning a password to the root user (Ubuntu doesn't assign one during install). Then execute "su -" to switch to the root user.

Technotes

Ubuntu 9.04: Location Of User's Crontab File