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Two dumb cron questions. I've not really ever had to make changes to cron in Slackware or Slack-based distros, so I'm a bit lost....

First, is there anything special I need to do to get a crontab recognized? I need the extra granularity it provides, but even though I've added /etc/crontab, it doesn't seem to be being picked up. I'm using this sort of format:

30 1 * * * * root <path-to-command-to-execute>

Second, how do I restart crond? A google search found some mention of /etc/init.d/cron restart, but there is no cron file in init.d, so I'm a bit lost there as well.

Paul.

Im by no means a geek,and im sure someone more clued up will get to you soon.
But this link might give you a head start maybe
http://www.unixgeeks.org/security/newbi ... ron-1.html
http://www.foogazi.com/2006/12/07/under ... 5-minutes/
Best of luck toothandnail

does show your cron file?

You can edit the crontab with crontab -e and the file for root is located at /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root.

deja69 wrote:Im by no means a geek,and im sure someone more clued up will get to you soon.
But this link might give you a head start maybe
http://www.unixgeeks.org/security/newbi ... ron-1.html
http://www.foogazi.com/2006/12/07/under ... 5-minutes/
Best of luck toothandnail

Thanks. Found the problem, eventually. Those are useful references.

Paul.

Tim CowChip wrote:

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sudo /usr/sbin/crond restart

Thanks. I was expecting a script in /etc/rc.d, which is what threw me.

does

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crontab -l

show your cron file?

No, but it did point me in the right direction. Too much time spent with Red Hat derived distros.

Paul.

thenktor wrote:You can edit the crontab with crontab -e and the file for root is located at /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root.

Thanks. That's what I did in the end. Which showed a completely different crontab to the one I'd created. Knowing where the operational crontab is stored helps as well.

I look after a number of SME servers (SME is CentOS based). CentOS stores a single crontab in /etc. and specifies a user on each command. Must be a different cron implementation. I think I prefer the Slack way...

Paul.