On 28 Mar 2007 at 8:41, Will Maier wrote:

quoted text
> According to cron(8), cron should be able to read commands from a
> properly formatted and chmoded /etc/crontab file. I've created such
> a file, but I can't seem to get cron to run the test command in it.
> 
>     # cat <<EOF > /etc/crontab
>     */1      *       *       *       *       /usr/bin/touch /tmp/crontest

That ain't a properly formatted system crontab string (you're missing the user field)

It is however a vaild user crontab string but then you can't put it in the system crontab.