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Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 08:20:53 -0700
From: "M.R.Murphy" <mrm@Mole.ORG>
Message-Id: <199606271520.IAA20509@meerkat.mole.org>
To: pechter@shell.monmouth.com, rjk@sparcmill.grauel.com
Subject: Re: The crontab controversy
Cc: andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu, freebsd-hackers@shell.monmouth.com,
        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
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>  > Should we:
>  > 
>  > 1.  Declare the ATT method the winner.
>  > 2.  Declare the BSD method (the REAL original crontab) the winner.
>  > 3.  Make the installation program remove one or the other at install
>  >      (put /var/cront/tabs/root in with the same actions as /etc/crontab
>  >      and have the install remove one or the other)
>  > 4.  Ignore the problem and trap the users/admins?
>  > 
>
> In order of preference, 1 3 2 4.
>
> Method 1 (/var/cron/tabs/*) offers the greatest versatility and
> consistency; it's sole disadvantage, as far as I can see, is that it
> requires root to execute one additional commmand when changing the system
> crontab file: "crontab new_crontab".  I'd even be willing to argue that
> this is a Good Thing.  Furthermore, a crontab file is a crontab file is a
> crontab file.  This makes it easier to write a script that (syntactically)
> verifies crontab files before installing them.

Before making such a decision, it might be a good thing to

  1. man cron
  2. man 1 crontab
  3. man 5 crontab
  4. cat /etc/crontab

and understand the reasons that cron is now the way that it is.

--
Mike Murphy  mrm@Mole.ORG  +1 619 598 5874
Better is the enemy of Good