Crontab running as a specific user

cron

I need to run a script daily. The script should be run as a specific user (ex. user1) not as root. So I put the cron file at /etc/cron.d and put the user name in the line (2nd column). But it gives an error saying that the command is not found. I suspect that the script was not run as user1's environment. Did I miss something?

Best Answer

Only /etc/crontab and the files in /etc/cron.d/ have a username field. In that file you can do this:

1 1 * * * username /path/to/your/script.sh

From root's crontab sudo crontab -e you can use:

1 1 * * * su username -c "/path/to/your/script.sh"

Or you can use the user's actual crontab like this:

sudo crontab -u username -e

The second column in any crontab file is for the hour that you want the job to run at. Did you mean the sixth field?

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