How to install fcron

Copyright © 2000-2026 Thibault Godouet | Fcron 3.4.1 | Web page : http://fcron.free.fr

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# 1.2. How to install fcron

## 1.2.1. Compilation requirements

- A C compiler (e.g. gcc)

- (optional) readline development library (e.g. libreadline-dev)

- (optional) PAM development library (e.g. libpam0g-dev)

- (optional) SE Linux development library (e.g. libselinux1-dev)

- (optional) Linux audit development library (e.g. libaudit-dev)

- If compiling from git checkout (rather than a tarball), then no generated file will be included out of the box, so you will need more tools to generate them. In particular the ./configure script and the documentation will be generated from the sources.

  - git

  - autoconf

  - docbook

  - docbook-xsl

  - docbook-xml

  - docbook-util

  - manpages-dev

## 1.2.2. Compilation and installation instructions

- uncompress the archive:

      bash$ tar -xzf fcron-X.Y.Z.src.tar.gz

- cd to the archive directory

      bash$ cd fcron-X.Y.Z

- run the configure script:

      bash$./configure

  > - If you can't see a `./configure`, then you probably checked out the files from git, in which case you need to run autoconf to generate the `configure` script.

  > - If using PAM, beware that by default the PAM configuration will be installed in `/usr/local/etc/`. That most likely mean that your system won't use this config, and may ask you to type your password everytime you start fcrontab or fcrondyn.

  >   The simplest way to avoid this is to instruct configure to use `/etc` instead with:

  >       bash$ ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc

  > - You may also want to change the place where fcron will be installed: you can use the configure 's option `--prefix` to do that. For instance:

  >       bash$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc

  >   (default is `prefix=/usr/local` and `sysconfdir=${prefix}/etc`).

  > - To disable the use of PAM, SE Linux or fcrondyn, use configure's option `--with-pam=no`, `--with-selinux=no` and/or `--with-fcrondyn=no`.

  > - The command make install asks you by default some questions you have to answer. To avoid that (which can be useful for automatic installers), you can use the ./configure's option `--with-answer-all` and/or `--with-boot-install` (see "./configure --help" for more details).

  > - To debug fcron, you should use configure 's option `--with-debug`.

  > - You can get info on the others configure 's options by running "./configure --help".

  Warning
  The configure script may not define a correct directory for the man pages and the documentation on some systems. You may check the values defined by configure and if necessary force a value by the options `--mandir` and `-with-docdir` (see the help by running "./configure `--help`"). If you get older fcron's man-pages with man command after having upgraded, it's probably because fcron has changed its default man directory: you should remove manually the outdated man-pages. The `Makefile` has been designed for GNU make. Some other version of make may fail to use it.

- (optional) check the file `config.h`, and change it if necessary (the configurable part is on the top of the file and clearly delimited).

- compile:

      bash$ make

- then install binaries as root:

      bash$ su root

      bash# make install

You can now run fcron and fcrontab.

> - fcron requires a `fcron` user and a `fcron` group. If they don't exist already, make install will propose to create them for you.

> - This is a POSIX conforming software. You must have a POSIX compiler (gcc for example) in order to compile it.

> - This software has been written for GNU/Linux systems. If you want to port it on an other Unix platform (thank you if you do it), please try to modify - if possible - only the configure script. Please send me any modifications at `<fcron@free.fr>` in order to include it in future releases.

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