Re: How to create a crontab per user?

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Fri, 10 Oct 1997, Ken Lauffenburger wrote:

> > > ... this allows me to think I am editing a personal crontab, but then
> > > when I save and quit, I get the following:
> > >
> > >     wrote /tmp/crontab.XXXXa28090, 2 lines, 3 chars
> > >     crontab: "/usr/bin/vi" exited with status 1
> 
> [...deleted...]
> 
> > try :x  - this saves and exits with a status of 0.
> 
> Thanks for the suggestion; I tried it, but same result.
> 
> BTW, I thought this might be some permissions problem.  I tried changing
> the permissions on the /var/spool/cron/crontabs directory to 777, but
> no luck.

what are the permissons on your /tmp directory?

it definitely seems as if 'crontab -e' is failing because of vi's exit code.
the fact that vi only wrote "2 lines, 3 chars" seems suspicious too.

i get:

cas@siva [08:39:33] ~$ crontab -e
     < edit file, :x to save & exit. >
crontab: installing new crontab

using :wq, :w followed by :q, or ZZ instead of :x makes no difference.  the
only way i can make it fail is to press ^Z while editing the crontab, kill
the vi process, and then type fg.  then i get:

cas@siva [08:44:55] ~$ crontab -e

[1]+  Stopped                 crontab -e
cas@siva [08:46:33] ~$ ps
  PID  TT STAT   TIME COMMAND
  388   4 S      0:00 -bash 
 4213  p3 S      0:01 bash 
 4517  p3 T      0:00 vi Makefile 
 9741  p6 S      0:00 bash 
 9784  p6 S      0:00 -bash 
 9813  p7 S      0:00 bash 
23152  p0 S      2:33 pine 
31986  p7 T      0:00 /usr/bin/vi /tmp/crontab.XXXXa31985 
31987  p7 R      0:00 ps 
cas@siva [08:46:36] ~$ kill 31986
cas@siva [08:46:40] ~$ fg

crontab -e
Vim: Caught deadly signal TERM
Vim: Finished.

crontab: "/usr/bin/vi" exited with status 1


i'm running hamm (aka unstable), but have never had any problems with
personal crontabs.

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name            Version        Description
+++-===============-==============-============================================
ii  cron            3.0pl1-39      management of regular background processing
ii  vim             4.6-2          Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor


craig

--
craig sanders
networking consultant                  Available for casual or contract
temporary autonomous zone              system administration tasks.


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