UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

My preference is not to use that method of editing the crontab. I prefer to save it to a file then edit then upload it again. That way I also have a local copy.

# crontab -l > crontab.out
# vim crontab.out
# crontab crontab.out

I really dont like direct edit of the crontab, esp at work if anything should go wrong I will have corrupted it or worse delete it.

Hmmm.

I can't answer or help but to add that I always update or change (edit) crontab files with vi and have never had a problem.

..... the solution is simple.

cp crontab crontab.working

vi crontab

If it does not work, you always have crontab.working

My comment you quoted was for using crontab -e... not with vi... I too use vi...

For some reason the combination of vi and the /tmp being linked to /var/www/tmp is what is causing the problem. I have a system that exhibits the same problem, using vi with a linked /tmp directory and the 'crontab -e' command refuses to update my cron entries for any user. I then definied two environment variables:

TMP=/var/www/tmp
TEMP=/var/www/tmp

and exported them, and now 'crontab -e' works fine with vi! Seems that either vi or crontab needs to know where your /tmp folder actually lives, since it does not seem to figure it out from the symbolic link from /tmp to /var/www/tmp.

Also, the command 'crontab -e' really is the best way to update your cron entries since this command actually edits a copy of you cron table (hence the need to define your real /tmp folder), and when you are done editing that copy, cron then parses your edits for syntax problems, and if everything looks fine it places your new crontab in place of the old. If there are any problems, it will let you know and give you a chance to make further edits.

Hope this helps everyone!