Feel free to laugh if this is a stupid question, but have you made sure to
leave an extra empty line at the end of the crontab?

Are you in /var/cron/cron.allow ?

Also, I usually pack everything into a script and then have cron call the
script.  It makes verbose comments and multi-line commands less obtrusive.

-Lars

Lars NoodC)n (larsnooden@openoffice.org)
         Ensure access to your data now and in the future
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On Wed, 28 Mar 2007, 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
>    EOF
>    # chmod 0600 /etc/crontab
>
> cron then successfully loads the changes made to that file:
>
>    Mar 28 07:23:01 lass cron[11652]: (*system*) RELOAD (/etc/crontab)
>
> I can also verify that the system file is loaded by watching the
> output of `cron -x load`. The command is valid per crontab(5) and
> works when inserted in root's tab using `crontab -e`.
>
> After the system tab is reloaded, cron fails to run any commands
> listed there: no CMD messages are logged (or seen in the debugging
> output) and the file is never touched.
>
> I've tried to get this to work on a semi-recent -current/i386 as
> well as the latest snapshot (also i386) with no luck. I browsed the
> code, but didn't see any obvious problems.
>
> Any ideas?