Cron is not available as non-root
 

Please, help to make cron available for non-root users.
I want to back-up automatically weekly or so, but I get a message: Cron is not yet available as non-root.
How can I make it available for non-root?
:(

Is there a particular reason you can't do your backup as root? I think that to backup any files owned by root you will have to be root when doing the backup.

I don't know. What's the common (safe) way of doing backup?
If its root in gui, ok, I'll do it as root in gui. If its more common to backup in user mode, I'd like to do it in user mode.
Please, advise.

Using root for the backups is probably the most common. Root can read any file regardless of permissions, and that means he can backup any user's files and system files in one script.

If you use a regular user to make backups, you can only backup files that users owns (or that belong to that user's group). On the plus side, you don't have to log in as root to restore your backups.

To answer your original question, there are two files (for the version of cron that I'm familiar with): cron.allow and cron.deny. I believe all you have to do is add the name the user into the appropriate file. I think cron defaults to "deny" if the user is not listed in either file.

I see. Thanks.

although it sounds like you were talked out of doing what you wanted to do, here is how to edit per user cron entries should the need ever arise for something else:

crontab -e

Not sure what distros install it and at what software selection it is included. I just went to my x86 linux box and it was not present but it is on my FreeBSD box. I've also encountered it on just about any commercial UNIX I've managed.

tpro