# Fcrontab -r wot?

**URL:** <https://community.ipfire.org/t/fcrontab-r-wot/13262>\
**Category:** Installing & Running IPFire\
**Created:** [3 December 2024 03:59 UTC](https://community.ipfire.org/t/fcrontab-r-wot/13262 "2024-12-03T03:59:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mumpitz](https://community.ipfire.org/user_avatar/community.ipfire.org/mumpitz/32/15450_2.png) [@mumpitz](https://community.ipfire.org/u/mumpitz)\
**Post date:** [3 December 2024 03:59 UTC](https://community.ipfire.org/t/fcrontab-r-wot/13262/1 "2024-12-03T03:59:48Z")

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I was about to recommend a blacklist script and look up exactly how it works, and was about to hammer fcrontab -e into the console and got an immediate

> 2024-12-03 04:01:42 INFO removing root’s fcrontab  
> Modifications will be taken into account right now.  
> [root@maschine # fcrontab -e  
> 2024-12-03 04:02:24 INFO fcrontab : editing root’s fcrontab  
> no fcrontab for root - using an empty one  
> Fcrontab is unchanged : no need to install it.

Damn, how do I get all that back?  
Is there a way? There has to be a way, right?

In the backup? or not?

That was important, wasn’t it?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bonnietwin](https://community.ipfire.org/user_avatar/community.ipfire.org/bonnietwin/32/12350_2.png) [@bonnietwin](https://community.ipfire.org/u/bonnietwin)\
**Post date:** [3 December 2024 08:03 UTC](https://community.ipfire.org/t/fcrontab-r-wot/13262/2 "2024-12-03T08:03:02Z")

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> [@mumpitz](#):
>
> In the backup? or not?

No it is not in the backup as it is a core program. Sorry.

Your simplest option is to run the fcrontab -e and then copy the fcrontab contents into it from the git repo content in this link

[https://git.ipfire.org/?p=ipfire-2.x.git;a=blob\_plain;f=config/cron/crontab;h=7088e0b750a755b860a478b47d6be8809aacd803;hb=refs/heads/next](https://git.ipfire.org/?p=ipfire-2.x.git;a=blob_plain;f=config/cron/crontab;h=7088e0b750a755b860a478b47d6be8809aacd803;hb=refs/heads/next)

EDIT:

Actually it looks like there is a way to recover.  
In the directory `/var/spool/cron/` there should be both a root and root.orig file.

From my understanding of what I have read the root.orig file is the source code that was used to create the binary fcrontab called root.

If you run the command

`fcrontab -z`

when logged in as root, it should re-install the user that you are logged in as.  
From the man page it should also be possible to use

`fcrontab -z root`

to explicitly tell it to re-install the root user.

EDIT2:

Unfortunately the fcrontab -z doesn’t work because the root and root.orig files are both removed by the fcrontab -r  
So the fcrontab -z does not work correctly. I thought it might be for if you have edited some changes and want to revert those changes but I just tested that and that also didn’t work. So not totally sure what fcrontab -z is for.

However what I can confirm is that if you run fcrontab -e and have an empty crontab, if you then past the contents of that url I provided earlier then you end up with a correct fcrontab for root again.