LinuxQuestions.org - Do I need to refresh the crontab after editing?

After successfully/properly editing a crontab for a user, after you write the file and exit, you should see this:

Code:

"crontab.yciBZ6/crontab" 24L, 1887C written

crontab: installing new crontab

At that moment the new crontab file that was installed will be processed. There is no need to restart the cron daemon.

from the cron manual page:

Quote:

Originally Posted by man cron

(...) cron then wakes up every minute, examining all stored crontabs, checking each command to see if it shoud be run in the current minute. (...) Additionally, cron checks each minute to see if its spool directory's modtime (or the modtime on the /etc/crontab file) has changed, and if it has, cron will then examine the modtime on all crontabs files and reload those which have changed. Thus cron need not be restarted whenever a crontab file is modified. Note that the crontab(1) command updates the modtime of the spool directory whenever it changes a crontab.