Hi, list:

I'm running Redhat Linux; Usually I use this command to modify the crontab files:
crontab NewFileName

These days I found that if I use
'cat /tmp/cronfile > /var/spool/cron/root'
the 'cronfile' counld not take effect until reloading the daemon "crontd".

my question is:
any other ways to solve this except /restarting/reload/kill -HUP/ the crontd.

thanks for any directions,
sincerely,

Cron jobs must always be changed with "crontab -e", not by changing the conf file directly. What you found is the simple consequence of not following this rule. I suppose "crontab -e" is just a simple 3-step command: edit, check, apply (restart daemon).

Much the same way, sudo rules are changed with "visudo", not be changing the sudoers file directly.

Yves.

But then, maybe you have a special need that makes you think you cannot use "crontab -e"? Non-interactive maybe?
If this is the case, consider tweaking the EDITOR environment variable instead.

Yves.

Thanks for you replay, but I dont quite agree with you.

=> Cron jobs must always be changed with "crontab -e", not by changing the conf file directly. What you found is the simple consequence of not following this rule. I suppose "crontab -e" is just a simple 3-step command: edit, check, apply (restart daemon).

At least, you can supply a cron file directly to 'crontab', and after both 'crontab -e' and 'crontab CronFile', changes will take effect at once. There is no need to restart crond.


=> Much the same way, sudo rules are changed with "visudo", not be changing the sudoers file directly.

Personally speaking, there is no daemon running for sudo, does it mean the configuration file is read only when 'sudo' is used?
The difference between 'visudo' and 'vi' maybe that:
the first one will do a syntax check, but the seond will not.

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