Re: crontab fails to change crontab file: "no changes made to crontab"

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

Steve,

Which editor are you using?  If you are using emacs, check that it
overwrites the file in-place (I know vi does).  God help you if you're
using Notepad. ;-)
This problem has come up quite a few times in the recent past, as
searching the archives for 'crontab' would have shown you.  For example,
you could look at this thread:
http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2002-10/msg00353.html
	Igor

On Thu, 10 Oct 2002, Steve Holden wrote:

> "Harig, Mark A." <maharig@idirect.net> wrote:
>
> > Somehow, the cron.sh script did not get run during your installation.
> > Here is what it does:
> >
> > #!/bin/sh
> >
> > set -x
> >
> > if [ ! -d /var/cron ]
> > then
> >   mkdir -p /var/cron
> > fi
> > chmod 1777 /var/cron
> >
> > if [ ! -d /var/cron/tabs ]
> > then
> >   mkdir /var/cron/tabs
> > fi
> > chmod 1777 /var/cron/tabs
> >
>
> Thanks very much for the response. A part of my debugging work was to run
> the /etc/postinstall/cron.sh.done script, which appears substantially the
> same. Anyhow, I removed /var/cron and ran your script, but I still see
>
> crontab: no changes made to crontab
>
> when I try to edit the crontab file. Note: the first crontab -e creates my
> crontab file with no problems. Crontab is simply (!) unable to establish the
> new version.
>
> I notice that the permissions this script attempts to establish aren't
> actually being imposed:
>
> $ ls -Rl /var/cron
> /var/cron:
> total 0
> drwxr-xr-x    2 sholden  None            0 Oct 10 14:35 tabs
>
> /var/cron/tabs:
> total 1
> -rw-r--r--    1 sholden  None          229 Oct 10 14:35 sholden
>
> The permissions are essentially unchaged. I even logged in as Administrator
> and tried:
>
> chmod 1777 /var/cron
>
> but still no changes were made to the permissions.  Does this indicate the
> error?
>
> regards
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Steve Holden                                  http://www.holdenweb.com/
> Python Web Programming                 http://pydish.holdenweb.com/pwp/
> Previous .sig file retired to                    www.homeforoldsigs.com
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Steve Holden [mailto:sholden@holdenweb.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 1:29 PM
> > To: cygwin@cygwin.com
> > Subject: crontab fails to change crontab file: "no changes made to
> > crontab"
> >
> >
> > I'm using a cygwin that I refreshed yesterday, on Win2K SP2.
> >
> > uname -a says: CYGWIN_NT-5.0 COMPUTER 1.3.12(0.54/3/2)
> > 2002-07-06 02:16 i686
> > unknown
> >
> > I installed the cron service following recommendations to include
> > CYGWIN="tty ntsec". Cygcheck reveals that cron is version 3.0.1-7.
> >
> > Everything appears fine when I create my crontab file, and
> > jobs do actually
> > run. But then I'm not allowed to edit the file. I even
> > deleted /var/cron to
> > ensure correct permissions, and have tried both recreating it with the
> > postinstall script and letting crontab recreate it. No joy.
> > The console
> > session below is fairly typical.
> >
> > sholden@COMPUTER ~
> > $ crontab -l
> > /var/cron: No such file or directory
> > /var/cron: created
> > tabs: No such file or directory
> > tabs: created
> > no crontab for sholden
> >
> > sholden@COMPUTER ~
> > $ crontab -e
> > no crontab for sholden - using an empty one
> > crontab: installing new crontab
> >
> > sholden@COMPUTER ~
> > $ crontab -e
> > crontab: no changes made to crontab
> >
> > sholden@COMPUTER ~
> > $ ls -lRF /var/cron
> > /var/cron:
> > total 0
> > drwxr-xr-x    2 sholden  None            0 Oct 10 13:11 tabs/
> >
> > /var/cron/tabs:
> > total 1
> > -rw-r--r--    1 sholden  None          224 Oct 10 13:11 sholden
> >
> > From a cursory reading of the source this look like a
> > failure to rename the temporary file. What have I done wrong?

-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"Water molecules expand as they grow warmer" (C) Popular Science, Oct'02, p.51


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