I think I've got it now:

There's no /etc/crontab in the 1.3.2 (i386) etc.tgz installation set I
just examined. There is /var/cron/tabs/root however.

I lost some of /var some time ago on the machine with problems (at
work), and I have'nt had it reinstalled properly. If /etc/crontab in
1.3.2 is different in format from the earlier version I have (I don't
know where it comes from!), thats propably where things go wrong now
that I edit that one instead of root's crontab.

My NetBSD box here at home does'nt have /etc/crontab, but only the
user specific one in /var/...

So tomorrow I will restore this part of etc.tgz on my NetBSD box at
work!

Anders

On Tue, 8 Sep 1998 15:10:58 -0400, you wrote:
>On Tue, Sep 08, 1998 at 12:30:07PM +0000, Anders Dinsen wrote:
>> I've got a strange problem, I think: Cron does'nt run the commands =
configured
>> in /etc/crontab, e.g. /usr/libexec/atrun.
>>=20
>> I recompiled cron with debugging enabled and it looks all right, it =
parses /etc/crontab
>> correctly and apparantly sets the scheduled execution times correctly.=
 But it
>> never ectually runs atrun.
>>=20
>> The debug output does not give me any indication of what it is that =
fails :-(
>>=20
>>=20
>> Any suggestions?
>
>I ran into this when I installed 1.3.2 and moved the nightly jobs to
>/etc/crontab. /etc/crontab has a special format. The /etc/crontab
>which ships with NetBSD-1.3.2 is not in this format. (I should've
>probably filed a PR on this ;). The difference is that /etc/crontab
>needs the user-names in addition to the regular fields. Like this:
>#Min    Hour    mday    month   wday    user command
>*/10    *       *       *       *       root /usr/libexec/atrun

----------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Dinsen
- father, geek, life addict!
                                    dinsen@danbbs.dk
                                    http://www.danbbs.dk/~dinsen