How does one setup Crontab for a specific user?

[mike360x1]

Hi there,

So I'm currently following a guide from Joshua Parker Ruehling detailing how to setup a Owncloud server (Guide here). One of the steps near the end of the guide instructs the user to enter in the command:

Code:

crontab -u www -e

I understand that this is for setting up a crontab for the user 'www'. Problem is, the command brings up unknown/blank lines of text that I cannot enter info into.
(Refer to attached picture)
I heard that when using this command, it should bring up a text editor to use for me to paste in contents. What am I doing wrong here?

So my question would be, How would I setup a cronjob using this command (specified above)
or
How would I go about manually creating a text document and entering the cronjob contents? (where, what filename, what kind of permissions does the file need to have?)

PS: I'm accessing this CLI via tcsh shell from freenas CLI

Code:

jexec potatocloud tcsh

I would be grateful,

Thanks in advance,
Michael L.

 

[colmconn]

That "unknown/blank lines of text that I cannot enter info into" that you see in response to running your crontab command is the vi editor telling you that you can now enter the text you want to type, assuming you know how to respond to vi.

If you're unfamiliar with vi you could try http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/UnixAndC/Editors/ViIntro.html for brief intro.

If you are more familiar with another editor, you could try to install it (in the jail) using the pkg command. Then set the EDITOR variable to be the name of your editor. Retry the crontab command again. It should proceed to use your desired editor rather then vi

 

[mike360x1]

Ah, I see. Coolbeans.

For the moment, I will set my default editor to nano.

ah okay I understand now, the vi text editor is a command mode editor. This is the first time I've used one.

Thanks for the info :D