FC" Cron Error - Newbe Question

[Jeff Vian]

On Sun, 2004-09-26 at 14:15, Robert Slade wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-09-25 at 12:27, Markku Kolkka wrote:
> > Robert Slade kirjoitti viestissään (lähetysaika lauantai, 25. syyskuuta 2004 09:57):
> > > My Crontab looks like this:
> > 
> > Which crontab is this really? _Your_ crontab (the one created by running
> > "crontab -e") or the file /etc/crontab? The syntax for these files is different.
> 
> It is the root crontab, all I have done is edited it with crontab -e (as
> root) to add the run-tasks.
> 

As I told you earlier, (and as Markku has also indicated) these lines
are inconsistent.

You cannot have lines in a users crontab that has the user name
included.

You say you did crontab -e to edit this file, but you must have copied
the contents of /etc/crontab to this file in order to have the top 10
lines match /etc/crontab 

I did some testing.  This scenario creates the situation you have.
1.  ls /var/spool/cron
    (no files listed)
2.  # crontab -e
    ( I see an enpty crontab file for root)
3.  # crontab /etc/crontab
    (this comes directly back to a prompt)
4.  # crontab -e
    (now I see the contents of /etc/crontab as the root users crontab)
    (I edit that and added a test line and saved my changes)
5.  # cat /etc/crontab
    (I see the contents of /etc/crontab WITHOUT the added lines)
6.  I then did a diff on /etc/crontab and /var/spool/cron/root and the
result was the line I added as test.
 
It is my suggestion that you may have done some part of these steps,
(particularly step 3 with the filename) that resulted in /etc/crontab
being copied to /var/spool/cron/root and then when you did crontab -e
you actually edited the users crontab which already contained lines with
invalid syntax.

Please investigate and if this is the case you can delete everything
above your 
> > # run-tasks
> > 0 2 * * * /usr/bin/freshclam --quiet -l /var/log/clam-update.log
> > 0 3 * * * /var/qmail/bin/qmailstats  1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null
lines and the problem should be solved.


> > 
> > > SHELL=/bin/bash
> > > PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
> > > MAILTO=root
> > > HOME=/
> > >
> > > # run-parts
> > > 01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
> > > 02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily
> > > 22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
> > > 42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly
> > 
> > These lines are in /etc/crontab format, and are the cause of the error.
> > 
> > > # run-tasks
> > > 0 2 * * * /usr/bin/freshclam --quiet -l /var/log/clam-update.log
> > > 0 3 * * * /var/qmail/bin/qmailstats  1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null
> > 
> > These are in the correct format for user crontab files
> > Why are you including /etc/crontab lines in your personal crontab?
> 
> Please see above. They are required for my mail server which I am trying
> to setup.
> 
> Rob
> 
>