From owner-freebsd-questions Wed May 22 10:21:22 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id KAA11686 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 22 May 1996 10:21:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cedb.dpcsys.com (cedb.DPCSYS.COM [165.90.143.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id KAA11677 for ; Wed, 22 May 1996 10:21:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cedb (cedb.DPCSYS.COM [165.90.143.3]) by cedb.dpcsys.com (8.6.10/DPC-1.0) with SMTP id RAA10506; Wed, 22 May 1996 17:19:55 GMT Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 10:19:54 -0700 (PDT) From: Dan Busarow X-Sender: dan@cedb To: Ollivier Robert cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: CRON: it loves me In-Reply-To: <199605220636.IAA13184@keltia.freenix.fr> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 22 May 1996, Ollivier Robert wrote: > You're not supposed to have a cron file for "root" except for > /etc/crontab... Or you have to be careful of what you put in either > one. They do not have the same format. > > That's not to say you can't do it. It is just that it is not the preferred > way. Since I've been running BSD for less than a year (with around 10 years SYSV experience) I'm hardly an expert on the "right" or preferred way. But... If I only had the man pages to go on (and that's pretty much the case) I'd have to conclude that /etc/crontab is an artifact and probably deprecated. /etc/crontab gets a passing mention in cron(8) where it simply says that it has a different format. Every other man page refers to crontab(1) and the /var/cron/tabs scheme. If there really is a reason for root to use /etc/crontab vs. crontab(1) I think it should be documented somewhere. And I'd like to hear what the reasons are even if they never get formally documented. Dan -- Dan Busarow 714 443 4172 DPC Systems Dana Point, California