crontab problem in slackware 10.2

dominant · 11-22-2007, 04:05 PM

Hi all

I cannot set up a job in crontab

When i run #crontab -e
then i write the command

i try to save it. It says that the file save but when i rerun crontab -e i see no changes.

Do you know what is going on?

harry edwards · 11-22-2007, 04:19 PM

It's a little hard to say - it sounds like it is not saving at all. Is the default editor for 'crontab -e' vi? If so, are you 100% it is saving successfully - it could be a permission error?

What does crontab -l show (after the edit and save)?

Alternatively you could edit the crontab file directory and restart cron manually.

Tinkster · 11-22-2007, 04:23 PM

As which user do you do this, how did you become that user?
What are the owneships and permissions of
/var/spool/cron/crontabs
and the files therein?

Cheers,
Tink

gilead · 11-22-2007, 05:38 PM

I had a similar problem here. When I changed the symlink for vi to point at vim (it was pointing to elvis), I couldn't save my cron jobs either. When I changed it back to elvis, crontab -e started working again. It's probably an environment setting, but I didn't take the time to check it.

dominant · 11-23-2007, 03:17 AM

Well, i try to install jobs as root.

after saving the file i see no changes runing #crontab -l

i see something like that "crontab.17667~" in the /var/spool/cron/

any ideas?

bathory · 11-23-2007, 04:36 AM

You can edit directly the crontab file at: /var/spool/cron/crontabs/<user>

dominant · 11-23-2007, 05:03 AM

I did that but the cron job did not run

bathory · 11-23-2007, 08:43 AM

Take a look at /var/log/cron to see if you find anything. Perhaps restarting crond might help.
Note that using crontab -e a file named cron.update is created in /var/spool/cron/crontabs containing the name of the user that edited its crontab. The crond daemon looks for it every minute, updates its entries and deletes the file. So use either crontab -e to edit a crontab, or if you use another editor (like pico) to edit directly /var/spool/cron/crontabs/user, after saving you must run crontab -e (you can quit without saving) just for crond.update to be created.

apollyonus · 02-16-2010, 01:16 PM

I know this is an old thread, but here it is. Slackware's crontab -e follows wherever vi [/usr/bin/vi] points. This is usually -> elvis. You can change the symlink to point to vim (like I did), but you have to set the VISUAL or EDITOR environment variables. These are not set by the default /etc/profile unless the shell happens to be ksh (has anyone used ksh since '94?).

If you run crontab -e on your Slackware box, and you see colors, e.g. syntax highlighting, then you're most likely using vi(m) which doesn't edit the file in place. try this instead: (note: to make the change automatic, put this line in /etc/profile)

Code:

export VISUAL=`which elvis`

You can verify that the new environment variable has been set by running

Code:

env | grep VISUAL

which should return:

Code:

/usr/bin/elvis

elvis is a clone of the ex/vi text editor - feel free to check out the man page; it works just like vi.
After all this, run crontab -e again, save it, and reopen it to find that your crontab has truly been installed.

Now you can have vi point to something useful

Code:

:~# ls -l /usr/bin/vi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 2010-02-16 12:57 /usr/bin/vi -> /usr/bin/vim*

and run crontab -e

Code:

# Run hourly cron jobs at 47 minutes after the hour:
47 * * * * /usr/bin/run-parts /etc/cron.hourly 1> /dev/null
#
# Run daily cron jobs at 4:40 every day:
40 4 * * * /usr/bin/run-parts /etc/cron.daily 1> /dev/null
#
# Run weekly cron jobs at 4:30 on the first day of the week:
30 4 * * 0 /usr/bin/run-parts /etc/cron.weekly 1> /dev/null
#
# Run monthly cron jobs at 4:20 on the first day of the month:
20 4 1 * * /usr/bin/run-parts /etc/cron.monthly 1> /dev/null
#
# test crontab entry after point vi -> vim

I found a nice writeup on cron and crontab here http://www.pantz.org/software/cron/croninfo.html