What's the difference between /etc/cron.hourly and crontab -e?

What's the difference between creating a script in

/etc/

Or adding the script in crontab -e with:

# m h dom mon dow command 0 * * * * myScript 

When I run crontab -l or sudo crontab -l I don't see the scripts created in /etc/cron.*

Is there any advantage of using one or the other?

1 Answer

User crontab files (the kind produced by non-root crontab -e) are stored in /var/spool/cron/crontabs/<user>. root cron jobs are run through /etc/cron.hourly, /etc/cron.daily, /etc/cron.weekly and /etc/cron.monthly, and controlled via /etc/crontab. The comments at the top of /etc/crontab say:

# /etc/crontab: system-wide crontab # Unlike any other crontab you don't have to run the `crontab' # command to install the new version when you edit this file # and files in /etc/cron.d. These files also have username fields, # that none of the other crontabs do.