crontab -e what does it actually edit?

wimnat · 04-21-2009, 11:12 PM

Hey,

I am currently developing a kickstart install and as a post-install task I want to add a bunch of crontab entries.

Usually when adding to cron I use the crontab -e command but I couldn't actually find any crontab file that i can just pipe my entries to in a script e.g. * * * * * run_this >> /somewhere/thecrontabfile

Any ideas?

Thanks,

W

billymayday · 04-21-2009, 11:15 PM

Typically the files are in /var/spool/cron

wimnat · 04-22-2009, 01:53 AM

Found it! Thanks

wimnat · 05-26-2009, 09:48 PM

Hey I ran in to a problem with editing /var/spool/cron...

I can copy the file there no problem and a service crond restart works fine.

However, if i try to edit the file with crontab -e, upon closing i get

crontab: installing new crontab
"/tmp/crontab.XXXXofvZpx":4: bad minute
errors in crontab file, can't install.

If i delete everything in the file then re-enter it exactly as before then it installs fine.

Any ideas?

billymayday · 05-26-2009, 09:53 PM

Posting what's in there might help.

wimnat · 05-26-2009, 10:26 PM

Sorry, I fixed it.

I was editing the file in Windows and so I just needed to save the file in Unix format.