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What does the run-parts mean in crontab?
Answer:
You might find the following lines in /etc/crontab
01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
The actual meaning of run-parts is to run all the scripts in a given directory. So the above hourly cron means to execute all the scripts in the directory /etc/cron.hourly every hour.
See:
man run-parts
Meaning of 2>&1 in crontab
Answer:
It is quite common to find the following line in crontab
32 5 * * * root /project/cron.sh >> /dev/null 2>&1
The meaning of 2>&1 at the end of line means to redirect the standard error stream (stderr) to the standard out stream (stdout), and finally redirect everything to /dev/null.
It is commonly used in crontab definition so if a given command return too much warnings, it will not be logged anywhere in the system in order to reduce the storage requirements.
