How to setup crontab ubuntu server terminal without sudo?

I won't get into how much this is a bad idea; simply put, running sudoin crontab requires your password to be stored somewhere in plaintext. It's a bad idea. The following is the preferred method of running administrative tasks through cron. Since you don't really need to write sudo in the crontab, if you are modifying root's crontab. Use root's crontab Run the following command: sudo crontab -e This opens up root's crontab. sudo is not necessary to run your command in this context, since it'll be invoked as root anyway. Therefore, you would simply append the following to root's crontab. @hourly rm somefile Now, if you absolutely want to be unsafe and take risks with your password, the following will run your command from your own crontab, and enter your password automatically when prompted by sudo. Again, this is not recommended. In your own crontab, write your command like so: @hourly echo "password" | sudo -S rm somefile The obvious disadvantage here is that, should anyone ever access your crontab, your password will be readable in plaintext. You shouldn't do this. shareimprove this answer edited Dec 6 '13 at 12:22 Braiam 34.9k1579142 answered Aug 9 '12 at 18:03 SirCharlo 17.9k34359

I got it, thanks a lot – sayem siam Aug 9 '12 at 18:11 1   Glad it works! Just be wary of any security holes you leave behind.. They might come back later to haunt you. – SirCharlo Aug 9 '12 at 18:15 1   @SirCharlo Why use root's user crontab instead of the systemwide crontab /etc/crontab? – Eliah Kagan Aug 10 '12 at 3:47 1   @Elijah why not? – SirCharlo Aug 11 '12 at 4:43 add a comment

up vote9down vote

If you are putting the script from one of the cron directories (/etc/cron.*) then you don't need to use sudo as that is running as root. If you are using crontab, then you will want to use root's crontab. This will run it as root, and also not need sudo. sudo crontab -e shareimprove this answer answered Aug 9 '12 at 18:02 tgm4883 5,4351931

I would also place the command in /etc/cron.hourly/something. That's what these directories are for. – John S Gruber Aug 23 '12 at 15:37 2   No. You could put it in /etc/cron.SOMETHING/SCRIPT, but I wouldn't do both. Both would give roughly the same function, although using crontab you would have a bit more power over how often/when things run. – tgm4883 Aug 23 '12 at 17:40 I should have made clear that I meant that as an alternative. Thanks. – John S Gruber Aug 23 '12 at 17:43 add a comment

up vote-1down vote

Run following command in terminal sudo visudo Added the following line to the end of the file: vidyadhar ALL= NOPASSWD: /bin/rm In the above example vidyadhar is the username and it will not ask for password if you are running rm command through vidyadhar.