I don't ever use the "crontab" command on Linux. Put the command you want cron to execute in a small shell script, and drop the shell script in /etc/cron.hourly, cron.daily, cron.weekly, or cron.monthly. Look at /etc/crontab to see when the script will be run. If you want it to run at some other time or interval, put a cron entry in a file (with "root" before the command) and drop it in /etc/cron.d. Cron checks cron.d every minute for new files. I much prefer this approach than loading up root's crontab with commands.
-----Original Message----- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Scully, William P Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 3:13 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Editing crontab Hopefully someone will have a suggestion on this. A user reports that when they log onto root and: crontab -e Changes made, even simply changes such as to comments, are lost after then exit the vi editor. The message shows: crontab: no changes made to crontab Logged on as root, I can edit the file, called /var/spool/cron/tabs/root, using vi. These changes are (not surprisingly) accepted. After making a change (adding a comment), crontab -e shows the newly-updated file. But I still cannot change it (for example, remove my newly-added comment) with the vi ":wq" command. If I use crontab -e to edit the file and ":w /root/asdf" I do see my changes in file /root/asdf. An lsattr command on the file in /var/spool/cron/tabs/root shows no attributes set (all hyphens). ls shows the file is R/W to owner alone. Even after I restart the server, the problem persists. The syntax of the existing cron file appears correct, in that "it's five tokens, plus the command to run". Even if I remove all records (excepts comments), the "no changes" message still occurs. What gives? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
