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From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,alt.sys.sun
Subject: Re: crontab update
Message-ID: <3025@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 12 Mar 90 19:45:33 GMT
References: <EMV.90Feb28121501@duby.math.lsa.umich.edu> <1990Mar1.195750.25818@eng.umd.edu> <1990Mar9.234707.7782@eci386.uucp>
Followup-To: comp.unix.questions
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Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
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(Was the "na" distribution on this stuck on automatically by some
excessively-helpful posting program, or did some poster along the line
genuinely think this was of interest only to North Americans?)

>It's by no means certain that "crontab -l" will actually cause cron's
>internal tables to change.  It could just as easily be dumping it's
>internal tables without reading the file...  Or, reading the file
>without updating it's tables.

The latter is *exactly* what it does, in all the versions I've seen in
S5; "cron" doesn't even know that you've *done* a "crontab -l", so it
has no effect whatsoever on "cron"s internal tables.

>The *only* documented and reliable ways of getting cron to recognize
>a new crontab is to use the crontab command.

What he said.  Don't try to get clever, you'll just outsmart
yourself....