1.1. About fcron

1.1.1. What is fcron?

Fcron is a scheduler. It aims at replacing Vixie Cron, so it implements most of its functionalities.

But contrary to Vixie Cron, fcron does not need your system to be up 7 days a week, 24 hours a day: it also works well with systems which are not running neither all the time nor regularly (contrary to anacrontab).

In other words, fcron does both the job of Vixie Cron and anacron, but does even more and better :)) ...

To do so, fcron allows you to use the standard mode in which you tell it to execute one command at a given date and hour and to make it run a command according to its time of execution, which is normally the same as system up time. For example:

Run the task 'save /home/ directory' every 3h15 of system up time.

and, of course, in order to make it really useful, the time remaining until next execution is saved each time the system is stopped. You can also say:

run that command once between 2am and 5am

which will be done if the system is running at any time in this interval.

Fcron also includes a useful system of options, which can be applied either to every lines following the declaration or to a single line. Some of the supported options permit to:

1.1.2. License

Fcron is distributed under GPL license (please read the license in the gpl file).

1.1.3. Requirements

1.1.4. Compilation and installation

See the install file (either install.txt or install.html).

1.1.5. Configuration

See the fcron(8), fcrontab(5) and fcrontab(1) manpages.

1.1.6. Bug reports, corrections, propositions...

Please send me the description of any bug you happen to encounter (with, even better, the corresponding patch -:) and any propositions, congratulations or flames at

Please contact Russell Coker directly for problems about SE Linux support at , since he maintains this part of the code.