Old admin point of vue:
using crontab -e : fine you modify etc... but many people do that without having a spare (copy somewhere), some admins when have to do strong maintenance e.g after a crash and under pression dont want things else disturbing then and simply delete the content of the cron
spool.. else, if things dont work one day, how do you compare ? (noe previous copy...).
So if you are not too confident, a good way to do things is to have your cronfile somewhere where all cron users can read (so they have no excuse in overlapping schedules...) I usually put them in /sm/cron/ , suffixed by your account name e.g confile.blondie, if paranoid make a second copy ( I do...) cronfile.blondie.last, before any modification you can compare (no one else modified without you knowing of you modified without updating...) lets say you put the cronfiles in /sm/cron
Code:
cd /sm/cron
crontab -l >cronfile.blondie
diff blondie blondie.last
use
vi to edit/modify
then load the new file:
Code:
vi cronfile.blondie
crontab cronfile.blondie
you can chack your update with crontab -l | more ...
I add in comment where the file should be and its name:
Code:
# =========================================================================
# /sm/cron/cronfile.prod prod's cronfile (crontab)
# =========================================================================
# F O R M A T
# =========================================================================
# Minute Hour Month_Day Month Weekday Command
# (0-59) (0-23) (1-31) (1-12) (0-6)*0=sun run-string
# =========================================================================
#
All the best
