Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!emory!mephisto!udel!princeton!samadams!tr
From: tr@samadams.princeton.edu (Tom Reingold)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: crontab update
Keywords: crontab,question,update table,update crontab file
Message-ID: <24572@princeton.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 28 Feb 90 16:19:23 GMT
References: <855@edstip.EDS.COM>
Sender: news@princeton.Princeton.EDU
Distribution: na
Organization: Princeton University
Lines: 20

A few people have responded but may not know that there are two styles
of cron.  We don't know which the person who asked the question is
running.

In BSD-style cron, the crontab is checked every minute, so after
editing /usr/lib/crontab, nothing is required.

Is SysV-style cron, there is no /usr/lib/crontab.  Instead, there are
files called /usr/spool/cron/crontabs/name, where name is a login
name.  There is probably a file called root, which is probably what the
guy was talking about if he has SysV-style cron.  The crontab(1)
command sends the proper signal to the cron process to reread the
file.  It is then kept in memory.

Note that SunOS 4.x has SysV-style cron.

With either style cron, no reboot is necessary.

--
tr@samadams.princeton.edu