Ubuntu manuals go Provided by: cron_3.0pl1-124ubuntu2_i386 NAME cron - daemon to execute scheduled commands (Vixie Cron) SYNOPSIS cron [ -f ] [ -l ] [ -L loglevel ] DESCRIPTION cron is started automatically from /etc/init.d on entering multi-user runlevels. OPTIONS -f Stay in foreground mode, don't daemonize. -l Enable LSB compliant names for /etc/cron.d files. This setting, however, does not affect the parsing of files under /etc/cron.hourly , /etc/cron.daily , /etc/cron.weekly or /etc/cron.monthly. -L loglevel Tell cron what to log about jobs (errors are logged regardless of this value) as the sum of the following values: 1 will log the start of all cron jobs 2 will log the end of all cron jobs 4 will log all failed jobs (exit status != 0) 8 will log the process number of all cron jobs ...