Issue
What is the difference when I put crontab entry in crontab -e (the default location is : /var/spool/cron/username ) and in /etc/crontab? I mean crond daemon will essentially execute both cron jobs. Then why there are two different ways to schedule cronjob ? Which one preferred over the other ?
Solution
The difference is that the crontab command is the interface provided by the system for users to manipulate their crontabs. The /etc/crontab file is a special case file used to implement a system-wide crontab. /var/spool/cron/crontabs/$USER (or whatever the path happens to be) is an implementation detail.
If you can schedule jobs using the crontab command, you should do so.
Manually editing the contents of /etc/crontab (a) requires root access, and (b) is more error-prone. You can mess up your system that way.
If the jobs are to be run under your own user account, there's no need to use root access.
Even if the jobs are to run as root, it probably still makes more sense to use the crontab command invoked from the root account. (For one thing, it should detect syntax errors in the file.)
Personally, I don't use crontab -e. Instead, I have a crontab file that I keep in a source control system, and I use the crontab filename form of the command to install it. That way, if I mess something up, it's easy to revert to an earlier version.
Answered By - Keith Thompson