[ubuntu-uk] Scheduling a reboot of Ubuntu?

[William Anderson]

Alex Birchall wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to schedule a reboot of my Ubuntu server.
> 
> When I type sudo crontab -l at the prompt, the following is displayed:
> 
> #m h dom mon dow	command
> 40 12 * * 0-7 eprints reboot
> 
> As I understand it, this should mean that at 40 minutes past 12 each day
> the user eprints will issue the command reboot.

No, it means Sunday through Sunday (0 and 7 both mean Sunday for day of
week), at 20 to 1 in the afternoon (crontab uses the 24 hour clock), the
command 'eprints reboot' will be attempted.  If you don't have a command
'eprints', it will fail.  Check root's mailbox for more details of the
error output, and check man 5 crontab for more details of how the
crontab file works.

> The problem is, nothing appears to be happening.

See above :)

> Do I need to specify the user?

in a user's crontab?  no.  user specification for jobs goes into
/etc/crontab, which is maybe what's confusing you.  Again, see man 5
crontab for more.

> Should the entries be separated by spaces, or tabs?

doesn't matter.

-n