Default crontab - test entry?

tparker · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 03 Oct 2002 Posts: 85

I notice an entry of '*/15 * * * * root test -x /usr/sbin/run-crons && /usr/sbin/run-crons' in the default crontab... which adds an entry to my log every 15minutes.

Is it really necessary to make a test on the run-crons file at such frequency? Can I safetly remove this item altogether?

Thanks!

Naan Yaar · Bodhisattva Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 1549

This entry runs the script too (the part after the '&&'). This script runs cron scripts stored in /etc/cron.{hourly,daily,...}. Removing this would mean that any script that is added to one of these directories would not be run from cron, which is not necessarily a good thing (e.g., in my install, cron.daily contains two scripts -- makewhatis.cron and medusa.cron).