What is Cron or Crontab?
Cron or Crontab is a tool for configuring scheduled tasks on Unix systems and Raspberry Pi. It is used to schedule commands or scripts to run periodically and at fixed intervals. It is one of the major tools which is used for running automations on Raspberry Pi.
How to view scheduled task on Raspberry Pi?
You can view your tasks scheduled using Cron/Crontab by using the following code:-
crontab -l
How to open and edit the Cron/Crontab file on Raspberry Pi?
You can open and edit the Cron/Crontab file on raspberry pi using :-
crontab -e
But, it opens the crontab in Nano Editor by default and some people find it difficult to edit in Nano Editor
How to open and edit Crontab in differnt editor on Raspberry Pi?
You can choose a different editor for crontab by :-
select-editor
By default this will give you an option to select among Nano & VIM. After selecting your favorite editor, you can use crontab -e and it will open in the editor of your choice.
How to add Geany Editor in the list of editors in Raspberry Pi?
You can also choose to use the Geany Editor available on Raspberry Pi to edit the Crontab/Cron. But Geany Editor is not available in the list of the editors and to add the same you will have to use the following command:-
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/editor editor /usr/bin/geany 10
By doing this you will get geany editor in the list when you do select-editor
And thereafter using crontab -e will open it in your selected editor