[CLUE-Tech] crontab not working

[Ski Dawg]

On Wed, 2002-09-25 at 12:34, Ski Dawg wrote:
> I am having a problem with my crontab file. I loaded Red Hat 7.3 on a
> new computer (clean install). I then did a crontab -e and added the
> following line:
> 
<snip>

I just figured out what was going on with my cron daemon. Basically, the
cron daemon was not reading any changes to the crontab files in
/var/spool/cron or the file /etc/crontab. 

I figured this out by adding an entry (* * * * * skidawg date >>
/home/skidawg/date.txt) to /etc/crontab. When this didn't work, I
thought something was up with the daemon, since the other entries in
that file were being run. 

I started the Service Configuration in KDE (because I don't know how to
restart daemons at the command line yet), selected crond, and hit
restart 3 or 4 times in a row. After this, the cron daemon recognized
the changes in /etc/crontab. 

I then made a change in the crontab file for skidawg (by using crontab
-e) and it didn't work. I restarted the daemon again (only once this
time) and the change that I just made started working.

I then removed everything from /etc/crontab that I had added for testing
and also did crontab -e to fix the crontab file for skidawg (remove the
testing entries). These changes didn't take effect until I restarted the
cron daemon again.

For some reason, the cron daemon is not reading when any of the files in
/var/spool/cron/ or the /etc/crontab file are getting changed. I haven't
had this problem on other Red Hat 7.3 systems that I have been running,
so I am not sure what to do about it. Until I figure it out, I will just
have to remember to manually restart the cron daemon whenever I make a
change to the crontab files.

Thanks to everyone (Randy, Bruce, Dale, Dave) who offered suggestions. I
appreciate your assistance.

-- 
Doug

Registered Linux User #285548
http://counter.li.org
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