trixie and "crontab -e"

["D. R. Evans" <doc.evans@gmail.com>]

I upgraded my main desktop machine from bookworm to trixie yesterday, and am 
now going through the pain of trying to fix things that have broken :-(

One that has me stumped is a change in the behaviour of the "crontab -e" command.

In the past, as an ordinary user, I could edit my crontab file by executing 
"crontab -e": it would display my crontab file in a file editor, and I could 
make changes and save them to the file in the manner that one would expect.

But now when I do that, the terminal instantly says "No modification made", 
and then pops up an editor with a blank file [i.e., NOT my actual crontab 
file] called "crontab".

There is no /etc/crontab.allow file. There is no /etc/crontab.deny file, but 
the behaviour is the same if I create an empty /etc/crontab.deny file.

The manpage for crontab somewhat unhelpfully says: "If neither of these files 
exists, then depending on site-dependent configuration parameters, only the 
super user will be allowed to use this command, or all users will be able to 
use this command.". But I can't find any explanation of what "site-dependent 
configuration parameters" it is talking about, to allow all users to usefully 
execute "crontab -e".

I have also tried creating an /etc/crontab.allow file, with my username on the 
first and only line. But that did not change the behaviour described above 
when I invoke "crontab -e".

So, to be clear, I have tried:
  exactly out of the box (no /etc/crontab.allow or /etc/crontab.deny), with 
no changes to a configuration that worked in earlier versions of debian stable;
  explicitly creating an empty /etc/crontab.deny, with no /etc/crontab.allow;
  explicitly creating an /etc/crontab.allow containing a single line with my 
username, and no /etc/crontab.deny.

None of these allowed me to edit my crontab file when I issued a "crontab -e" 
command.

Further guidance sought.

  Doc

PS I just discovered something that may or may not be related:

executing "crontab -n", instead of checking the syntax of the crontab file, 
outputs:

> [ZB:~] crontab -n
> crontab: usage error: file name must be specified for replace
> usage:  crontab [-u user] [-n] file
>         crontab [ -u user ] [ -i ] { -e | -l | -r }
>
>         -h      (displays this help message)
>
>         file    (default operation is replace, per 1003.2)
>         -n      (dry run: checks the syntax, then bails out)
>         -u user (choose the user whose crontab is touched)
>
>         -e      (edit user's crontab)
>         -l      (list user's crontab)
>         -r      (delete user's crontab)
>
>         -i      (prompt before deleting user's crontab)
> [ZB:~]

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