crontab not executing command
 

i have placed the following line in the crontab file
crontab -e

and then
in the crontab file
57 14 * * * ls /home

not sure what dist u have, can you post the output of "crontab -l" and show us your etc directory?

How do you know it's not running?

that will not display anything on your screen. you can check to see if is running by looking in /var/log/cron/

you can edit that file as root and look for the 2:57pm time stamp. it will show you there if it ran.

I think you're supposed to redirect the output somewhere. Try the following entry instead

57 14 * * * ls /home >> home.log

Then when you open home.log you will see the output of this command.

can i redirect the output to my terminal ?

I don't think so off the top of my head. I think the Crontab Deamon sort of acts like its own session so you wouldn't see it just as if you wouldn't see the output of another user logged in at the same time as you running the command. Is there a reason you don't want it directed to a file? In all my servers I direct output to log files (half the reason i love linux)

It is possible to run GUI apps if you tell cron to use a display. Assuming you are running a desktop the general command is:

57 14 * * * DISPLAY=:0.0 /my/GUI/app

Is this a homework problem?