It could be that the file system where the work file is being created is full. Thus, when you try to save your changes and exit, the changes cannot be written to disk and then copied to /var/spool/...
Mark Post -----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
