On Sun, 2004-09-26 at 14:15, Robert Slade wrote: > On Sat, 2004-09-25 at 12:27, Markku Kolkka wrote: > > Robert Slade kirjoitti viestissään (lähetysaika lauantai, 25. syyskuuta 2004 09:57): > > > My Crontab looks like this: > > > > Which crontab is this really? _Your_ crontab (the one created by running > > "crontab -e") or the file /etc/crontab? The syntax for these files is different. > > It is the root crontab, all I have done is edited it with crontab -e (as > root) to add the run-tasks. > As I told you earlier, (and as Markku has also indicated) these lines are inconsistent. You cannot have lines in a users crontab that has the user name included. You say you did crontab -e to edit this file, but you must have copied the contents of /etc/crontab to this file in order to have the top 10 lines match /etc/crontab I did some testing. This scenario creates the situation you have. 1. ls /var/spool/cron (no files listed) 2. # crontab -e ( I see an enpty crontab file for root) 3. # crontab /etc/crontab (this comes directly back to a prompt) 4. # crontab -e (now I see the contents of /etc/crontab as the root users crontab) (I edit that and added a test line and saved my changes) 5. # cat /etc/crontab (I see the contents of /etc/crontab WITHOUT the added lines) 6. I then did a diff on /etc/crontab and /var/spool/cron/root and the result was the line I added as test. It is my suggestion that you may have done some part of these steps, (particularly step 3 with the filename) that resulted in /etc/crontab being copied to /var/spool/cron/root and then when you did crontab -e you actually edited the users crontab which already contained lines with invalid syntax. Please investigate and if this is the case you can delete everything above your > > # run-tasks > > 0 2 * * * /usr/bin/freshclam --quiet -l /var/log/clam-update.log > > 0 3 * * * /var/qmail/bin/qmailstats 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null lines and the problem should be solved. > > > > > SHELL=/bin/bash > > > PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin > > > MAILTO=root > > > HOME=/ > > > > > > # run-parts > > > 01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly > > > 02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily > > > 22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly > > > 42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly > > > > These lines are in /etc/crontab format, and are the cause of the error. > > > > > # run-tasks > > > 0 2 * * * /usr/bin/freshclam --quiet -l /var/log/clam-update.log > > > 0 3 * * * /var/qmail/bin/qmailstats 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null > > > > These are in the correct format for user crontab files > > Why are you including /etc/crontab lines in your personal crontab? > > Please see above. They are required for my mail server which I am trying > to setup. > > Rob > >