Your message dated Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:49:07 +0000
with message-id <[email protected]>
and subject line Bug#1122802: fixed in cron 3.0pl1-203
has caused the Debian Bug report #1122802,
regarding cron: tbl(1) table in crontab(5) is poorly specified
to be marked as done.
This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.
(NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this
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misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact [email protected]
immediately.)
--
1122802: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1122802
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact [email protected] with problems
--- Begin Message ---
Package: groff
Version: 1.23.0-10
Severity: normal
With a 80-column terminal, groff (tbl) generates a table that is
not wide enough (only 42 columns are used), meaning unnecessary
line breaks.
This can be seen with the crontab(5) man page.
Here's an excerpt:
.TH "CRONTAB" "5" "12/11/2025" "crontab" "crontab User Manual"
.nh
.PP
Instead of the first five fields, one of eight special strings may appear:
.TS
allbox tab(:);
lB lB.
T{
string
T}:T{
meaning
T}
.T&
l l
l l
l l
l l
l l
l l
l l
l l.
T{
@reboot
T}:T{
Run once, at startup\&.
T}
T{
@yearly
T}:T{
Run once a year, "0 0 1 1 *"\&.
T}
T{
@annually
T}:T{
(same as @yearly)
T}
T{
@monthly
T}:T{
Run once a month, "0 0 1 * *"\&.
T}
T{
@weekly
T}:T{
Run once a week, "0 0 * * 0"\&.
T}
T{
@daily
T}:T{
Run once a day, "0 0 * * *"\&.
T}
T{
@midnight
T}:T{
(same as @daily)
T}
T{
@hourly
T}:T{
Run once an hour, "0 * * * *"\&.
T}
.TE
On this file, "groff -t -Tutf8 -mandoc" generates
CRONTAB(5) crontab User Manual CRONTAB(5)
Instead of the first five fields, one of eight special strings may
appear:
┌───────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ string │ meaning │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ @reboot │ Run once, at startup. │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ @yearly │ Run once a year, "0 0 1 1 │
│ │ *". │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ @annually │ (same as @yearly) │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ @monthly │ Run once a month, "0 0 1 * │
│ │ *". │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ @weekly │ Run once a week, "0 0 * * │
│ │ 0". │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ @daily │ Run once a day, "0 0 * * │
│ │ *". │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ @midnight │ (same as @daily) │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ @hourly │ Run once an hour, "0 * * * │
│ │ *". │
└───────────┴────────────────────────────┘
crontab 12/11/2025 CRONTAB(5)
while the following would have been much better for the table:
┌───────────┬────────────────────────────────┐
│ string │ meaning │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ @reboot │ Run once, at startup. │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ @yearly │ Run once a year, "0 0 1 1 *". │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ @annually │ (same as @yearly) │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ @monthly │ Run once a month, "0 0 1 * *". │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ @weekly │ Run once a week, "0 0 * * 0". │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ @daily │ Run once a day, "0 0 * * *". │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ @midnight │ (same as @daily) │
├───────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ @hourly │ Run once an hour, "0 * * * *". │
└───────────┴────────────────────────────────┘
(obtained by adding the -rLL=90n -rLT=90n options).
I suppose that the table was designed to fit in 80-columns terminals
without line breaks.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: forky/sid
APT prefers unstable-debug
APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (500,
'stable-security'), (500, 'stable-debug'), (500, 'proposed-updates-debug'),
(500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 6.17.10+deb14-amd64 (SMP w/16 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
Versions of packages groff depends on:
ii groff-base 1.23.0-10
ii libc6 2.42-5
ii libgcc-s1 15.2.0-11
ii libstdc++6 15.2.0-11
ii libx11-6 2:1.8.12-1
ii libxaw7 2:1.0.16-1
ii libxmu6 2:1.1.3-3+b4
ii libxt6t64 1:1.2.1-1.3
Versions of packages groff recommends:
ii ghostscript 10.06.0~dfsg-3
ii imagemagick 8:7.1.2.8+dfsg1-1
ii imagemagick-7.q16 [imagemagick] 8:7.1.2.8+dfsg1-1
ii netpbm 2:11.12.00-1
ii perl 5.40.1-7
ii psutils 3.3.14-1
groff suggests no packages.
-- no debconf information
--
Vincent Lefèvre <[email protected]> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Pascaline project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Source: cron
Source-Version: 3.0pl1-203
Done: Georges Khaznadar <[email protected]>
We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
cron, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.
A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.
Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed. If you
have further comments please address them to [email protected],
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.
Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Georges Khaznadar <[email protected]> (supplier of updated cron package)
(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing [email protected])
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
Format: 1.8
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2025 16:17:53 +0100
Source: cron
Architecture: source
Version: 3.0pl1-203
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Georges Khaznadar <[email protected]>
Changed-By: Georges Khaznadar <[email protected]>
Closes: 1122802
Changes:
cron (3.0pl1-203) unstable; urgency=medium
.
* reverted the change (about LANG=C.UTF-8) bug 1122750 is closed, because
the MDY format for dates is OK
* added non-breaking spaces into the first line of tables, in the
docbookxml source file crontab.5.xml, in order to reshape properly
columns and avoid line breaks. Unfortunately, <colspec> elements are
poorly interpreted by xsltproc and the stylesheet for manpages.
Closes: #1122802
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