Man page 5 : anacrontab

/etc/anacrontab - configuration file for anacron

The file /etc/anacrontabdescribes the jobs controlled by anacron(8). Its lines can be of three kinds: job-description lines, environment assignments, or empty lines.

Job-description lines are of one of these two forms:

period delay job-identifier command

@period_name delay job-identify command

The periodis specified in days, the delayin minutes. The job-identifiercan contain any non-blank character, except slashes. It is used to identify the job in Anacron messages, and as the name for the job's timestamp file. The commandcan be any shell command. The fields can be seperated by blank spaces or tabs. The period_namecan only be set to monthly at the present time. This will ensure jobs are only run once a month, no matter the number of days in this month, or the previous month.

Environment assignment lines are of the form:

VAR = VALUE

Spaces around VARare removed. No spaces around VALUEare allowed (unless you want them to be part of the value). The assignment takes effect from the next line to the end of the file, or to the next assignment of the same variable.

Empty lines are either blank lines, line containing white-space only, or lines with white-space followed by a '#' followed by an arbitrary comment.

You can continue a line onto the next line by ending it with a '\'.

anacron(8)

The Anacron READMEfile.

Itai Tzur <>

Currently maintained by Pascal Hakim <pasc@(debian.org|redellipse.net)>.