Raspberry Pi Jessie has Broken Cron/at

["Martin McCormick" <martin.m@suddenlink.net>]

	This raspberry Pi is running jessie lite.  Raspberry Pi
documentation says that cron and at jobs are disabled by
default. There is a very odd fix recommended by some
documentation in which one edits a file named

/home/pi/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/script.raspbmc.settings/settings.xml

You supposedly edit that file and change a variable which allows
cron and at jobs to now run. Since unix-like systems have had
running crons for decades, is there a more conventional way to
restore this functionality?  There is something odd about needing
kodi installed to make cron work.  Kodi is not installed which is
why I am asking before wasting all this disk space just to turn
cron on. If you don't need kodi, could you just create that path
and file with that one variable to act as a place-holder and
enable cron?

Thanks for all constructive ideas.

Martin McCormick