[Techtalk] crontab vs vi

[gabrielle]

>Message: 4
>Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 18:10:06 -0800
>From: Laurel Fan <laurel at sdf.lonestar.org>
>
>The manpage for crontab on my solaris box says:
>            Note  that all crontab jobs should be
>            submitted using crontab; you should not  add  jobs  by
>            just editing the crontab file because cron will not be
>            aware of changes made this way.

OK, all is clear now.  Solaris doesn't automatically re-read the cron 
file--I was stopping and restarting crond if I had an edit (is that a bad 
thing to do?).  If I use crontab, I don't have to mees with the daemon.  I 
had a problem with syntax once (not enough fields) and crond just sent me a 
very nice error message.  I guess I've just been really lucky not to have 
any other problems--my linux boxes never batted an eyelid (?) when I used 
vi either.

Thanks everyone for the tips.

gabrielle
"when you goof, goof big."