I have a script which goes out and installs a package on a box remotely and im trying to get it to add a cron job too..but im having a few problems, whilst it does add the entry it wont run unless I connect to the machine , crontab -e, then :wq. This re-reads the configuration file and it will now run. so i tried in my script the following methods

1) I tried to edit the cron file for root directly

But i realised that the process would need to be HUP'ed to re-read this conf file so i tried adding

I come in the next morning and I check /var/cron/log and nothing has run. However, as i said, if i crontab -e and then save it immediately (:wq) then it will work fine



2) Ok, as far as im aware the above should have worked but I thought id try another method, this according to my colleague would definately work. Output crontab -l to a temp file , append the line to the temp file and use crontab <filename>. to re-read it in...
Same thing, come in next morning nothings happened, log onto box crontab -e, then immediately same it (:wq) and all is working ..

Does anybody have any idea on how i can get this to work

cheers

Try changing the last line to:

ssh $mybox 'crontab < /tmp/cron1'

If this really does not work, your crontab must be broken. You could kill cron, modify the true crontab and restart cron.