crontab: no changes made to crontab

crontab: no changes made to crontab

[Michael Chen]

Dear all, since the first time using "crontab -", I can never change the
crontab file anymore. "crontab -e" calls emacs, but cron just discarded any
new modifications. The emacs saved the "crontab.*****" into /tmp. What's
wrong? Thanks.


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Re: crontab: no changes made to crontab

[Thorsten Kampe]

* Michael Chen (2004-03-02 06:57 +0100)
> Dear all, since the first time using "crontab -", I can never change the
> crontab file anymore. "crontab -e" calls emacs, but cron just discarded any
> new modifications. The emacs saved the "crontab.*****" into /tmp. What's
> wrong? Thanks.

Try using another editor as Emacs is a GUI editor.


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Re: crontab: no changes made to crontab

[Igor Pechtchanski]

On Tue, 2 Mar 2004, Thorsten Kampe wrote:

> * Michael Chen (2004-03-02 06:57 +0100)
> > Dear all, since the first time using "crontab -", I can never change the
> > crontab file anymore. "crontab -e" calls emacs, but cron just discarded any
> > new modifications. The emacs saved the "crontab.*****" into /tmp. What's
> > wrong? Thanks.
>
> Try using another editor as Emacs is a GUI editor.

This has nothing to do with emacs being a GUI editor (which it isn't, BTW,
or not necessarily).  This does have to do with the editor writing files
in-place.  I'm not sure if either the native or the Cygwin port of emacs
does.  That said, Thorsten did provide a good rule of thumb: most GUI
editors, especially Windows ones, don't write files in place.
	Igor
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Re: crontab: no changes made to crontab

[Jeff Mincy]

> On Tue, 2 Mar 2004, Thorsten Kampe wrote:
>> * Michael Chen (2004-03-02 06:57 +0100)
>> > Dear all, since the first time using "crontab -", I can never change the
>> > crontab file anymore. "crontab -e" calls emacs, but cron just discarded any
>> > new modifications. The emacs saved the "crontab.*****" into /tmp. What's
>> > wrong? Thanks.
>>
>> Try using another editor as Emacs is a GUI editor.
> 
> This has nothing to do with emacs being a GUI editor (which it isn't, BTW,
> or not necessarily).  This does have to do with the editor writing files
> in-place.  I'm not sure if either the native or the Cygwin port of emacs
> does.  That said, Thorsten did provide a good rule of thumb: most GUI
> editors, especially Windows ones, don't write files in place.

Probably OT, but Emacs has several different ways to save files.
This is for XEmacs, (as far as I remember) Emacs works the same way.

See `file-precious-flag'
  This feature works by writing the new contents into a temporary file
  and then renaming the temporary file to replace the original.
  In this way, any I/O error in writing leaves the original untouched,
  and there is never any instant where the file is nonexistent.

crontab -e expects the changes to be made in place, so try
 (setq file-precious-flag nil)

If it works you could add this line as the first line of the crontab.
## -*- file-precious-flag: nil -*-

-jeff


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crontab: no changes made to crontab

[Andrey Repin]

Greetings, All!

I'm trying to install a new cron job, and the thing fails claiming that it
didn't see the edits I made to the file.

>> # echo "USER=$USER" | crontab -
>>
>> # crontab -l
>> # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE - edit the master and reinstall.
>> # (- installed on Sat Jul  6 13:35:43 2024)
>> # (Cron version V5.0 -- $Id: crontab.c,v 1.12 2004/01/23 18:56:42 vixie Exp $)
>> USER=anrdaemon
>>
>> # crontab -e
>> ### do some edits…
>> crontab: no changes made to crontab

Piping a new file to the crontab works, but that's "slightly" cumbersome.
What is it missing why it does not want to just work?

-- Few moments later… ---

It seems crontab dislikes safe file writes.

>> $ stat x > 1; nano x; stat x > 2; diff -u0 1 2
>> --- 1   2024-07-06 13:44:36.448756500 +0300
>> +++ 2   2024-07-06 13:44:46.793312000 +0300
>> @@ -5,3 +5,3 @@
>> -Access: 2024-07-06 13:43:53.343129900 +0300
>> -Modify: 2024-07-06 13:41:09.178803500 +0300
>> -Change: 2024-07-06 13:41:09.178803500 +0300
>> +Access: 2024-07-06 13:44:46.174586500 +0300
>> +Modify: 2024-07-06 13:44:45.168108900 +0300
>> +Change: 2024-07-06 13:44:45.168108900 +0300
>>
>> $ stat x > 1; $EDITOR x; stat x > 2; diff -u0 1 2
>> --- 1   2024-07-06 13:46:31.604731900 +0300
>> +++ 2   2024-07-06 13:46:37.348451500 +0300
>> @@ -3 +3 @@
>> -Device: 30371,22662    Inode: 65020719620177911  Links: 1
>> +Device: 30371,22662    Inode: 65302194596888567  Links: 1
>> @@ -5,3 +5,3 @@
>> -Access: 2024-07-06 13:44:46.792312100 +0300
>> -Modify: 2024-07-06 13:44:45.168108900 +0300
>> -Change: 2024-07-06 13:44:45.168108900 +0300
>> +Access: 2024-07-06 13:46:35.198257000 +0300
>> +Modify: 2024-07-06 13:46:35.194253600 +0300
>> +Change: 2024-07-06 13:46:35.200254300 +0300

Is there a way around it that does not involve replacing crontab tool with my
own script that has no such issue?


-- 
With best regards,
Andrey Repin
Saturday, July 6, 2024 13:34:34

Sorry for my terrible english...