I'm trying to find out some details regarding cron and /etc/cron.d/ on a RedHat system. Ironically, my answer is viewable within the vixie-cron-*.src.rpm for this package, but the the man pages for cron
don't match the text which is provided by the vixie-cron
RPM.
If I search my MANPATH for the keyword cron
, it shows me some results like vixie-cron (rpm)
. What does this (rpm)
tag mean, why are these manpages not installed on the system and can I view those manpages?
$ man -k cron
/etc/anacrontab [anacrontab] (5) - configuration file for anacron
anacron (8) - runs commands periodically
anacron (rpm) - A cron-like program that can run jobs lost during downtime.
cron (8) - daemon to execute scheduled commands (ISC Cron V4.1)
crontab (1) - maintain crontab files for individual users (ISC Cron V4.1)
crontab (1p) - schedule periodic background work
crontab (5) - tables for driving cron (ISC Cron V4.1)
crontabs (rpm) - Root crontab files used to schedule the execution of programs.
vixie-cron (rpm) - The Vixie cron daemon for executing specified programs at set times.
Note that there is no page for vixie-cron
, and the vixie-cron package doesn't actually provide any manpages named vixie-cron
$ man vixie-cron
No manual entry for vixie-cron
$ rpm -q --whatprovides /usr/bin/crontab
vixie-cron-4.1-77.el5_4.1
$ rpm -q --list vixie-cron
/etc/cron.d
/etc/pam.d/crond
/etc/rc.d/init.d/crond
/etc/sysconfig/crond
/usr/bin/crontab
/usr/sbin/crond
/usr/share/man/man1/crontab.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man5/crontab.5.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/cron.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/crond.8.gz
/var/spool/cron
Best Answer
The command
man -k
queries against a pre-compiled database and not the manual pages themselves.I suspect that entries may have been made in the database (see
man mandb
for details) for pages that don't actually exist. I am not familiar enough with the RPM mechanisms to know how this could have happened.In a similar vein, there is considerable flexibility in what section a given manual page may claim to live. For example, on my system
man Carp
claims to be in section "3perl" where the underlying file is stored in.../man3/Carp.3perl.gz
. The commandsall yield the same page while
man -s 3junk Carp
complains that there is no such entry.You might find
mlocate
(a.k.a.locate
) to be useful for hunting files by name. I presume it is available for RedHat sinceredacted@redhat.com is credited as the author.