How to find source of custom script execution?

Question

Once upon a time I created a script that cleans my "Downloads" directory. By the way, all it does is to move files from ~/Downloads to ~/Downloads/Trash. I store my shell script in ~/shell_scripts.

I want to update the script, but sadly i realised I don't remember how I managed to execute it automatically :-( I started to search through Google on places to put execution of custom script, but in neither I found mentions of my script.

What I did so far was:

1. Checked .bashrc for both script name clean_downloads.sh and directory shell_scripts
2. Checked .bash_logout
3. .bash_login and .bash_profile files doesn't exist in my home directory
4. Checked /etc/profile for mentions and /etc/profile.d for copies of the script
5. Checked /etc/init.d

I haven't found copies of the script in any places except mentioned !/shell_scripts directory. I suspect somehow I added an execution line to a system file, because I'm almost sure I did some kind of verification if I typed everything correctly.

Do you know any ways to find I kind of system logs if a particular script was executed and why (from which file)?

Answer 1

I'm suspecting cron is executing your script periodically. In that case the following commands might help you find the corresponding entry in cron's configuration:

crontab -e
cat /etc/crontab
ls /etc/cron*