CRONNEXT(1)

✨ CRONNEXT(1) ✨

okay bestie, welcome to cronnext, section 1 of the User Commands manual, and let me just say — this little cutie is about to tell you exactly when cron is gonna do its thing next. no more guessing, no more staring at crontabs like 👁️👄👁️. we're getting answers. periodt.

🌸 NAME 🌸

cronnext — time of next job cron will execute

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

cronnext [-i users] [-e users] [-s] [-a] [-t time] [-q time] [-j
         command] [-l] [-c] [-f] [-h] [-V] [file]...

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So here's the vibe: cronnext figures out the time when cron is gonna execute the next job. that's it, that's the whole main character moment. 💅

With no arguments at all, it prints that time considering all the crontabs, expressed as the number of seconds since the Epoch, rounded to the minute. and because that's just a big ol' number, you can convert it into literally any other format using date(1), like:

date --date @43243254

ngl that's the move. 🫶

The file arguments are optional, bestie — they're not required. But if you do pass them, cronnext uses them as crontabs instead of the ones installed in the system. so you're basically saying "hey, read these instead." iconic behavior.

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -i user,user,user,... — Only consider the crontabs of the specified users. oh and btw, use *system* for the system crontab. yup, that's a literal keyword, not a glob. iykyk.
• -e user,user,user,... — Do not consider the crontabs of the specified users. the opposite of -i, the villain arc. 🙈
• -s — Do not consider the system crontab, usually the /etc/crontab file. and heads up, the system crontab usually contains the hourly, daily, weekly and monthly crontabs, which might be better dealt with by anacron(8). so like, maybe let anacron handle that, bestie.
• -a — Use the crontabs installed in the system in addition to the ones passed as file arguments. this is implicit if no file is passed. so it's giving "why not both?" energy.
• -t time — Determine the next job from this time, instead of now. the time is expressed in number of seconds since the Epoch, as obtained for example by date +%s --date "now + 2 hours", and is internally rounded to the minute. time travel but make it shell. ⏰
• -q time — Do not check jobs over this time, expressed in the same way as in option -t. so you're capping the search window.
• -j command — Only look for jobs that contain command as a substring. filter by command, slay.
• -l — Print the whole entries of the jobs that are the next to be executed by cron. the default is to only print their next time of execution, so this is the "give me the full tea" option. 🍓
• -c — Print every entry in every crontab with the next time it is executed. all of them. no skips. we love a completionist. ✨
• -f — Print all jobs that are executed in the given interval. Requires option -q. do not forget your -q, bestie, it will not work without it. 😭
• -h — Print usage output and exit. the "help meee" button.
• -V — Print version and exit. the "who even are you" button.

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Marco Migliori — the genius behind all this, we stan. 👑

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

cron(8), cron(1), crontab(5), crontab(1), anacron(8), anacrontab(5), atq(1), date(1)

go read those too, fr fr, they're the extended universe. 📚

okay that's the whole page, bestie! this absolute banger of a manpage comes to you from cronie, dated 2017-06-11 — vintage but still eating. 💖✨🎀 stay scheduled, stay slay. 🦋