Hi guys,

I'm trying to edit my crontab with the -e flag and I'm getting an error:

root@OpenWrt:~# crontab -e
crontab: cannot change dir to /var/spool/cron/crontabs: No such file or directory

The crond has been started with /etc/contabs in mind

root@OpenWrt:~# ps -ef | grep crond
  431 root        392 S   crond -c /etc/crontabs

The permissions seems right

root@OpenWrt:~# ls -l /etc | grep crontabs
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            0 Jan  1 21:24 crontabs

root@OpenWrt:~# ls -l /etc/crontabs/
-rw-------    1 root     root            0 Jan  1 21:24 root

Since /var is a symlink to /tmp, this /var/spool/cron would be flushed at reboot, am I right ?

I am wondering if the /var/spool/cron is a parameter specified during compilation. Is there a way the developpers could make that path point to a permanent location ?

Thanks for your help, it's greatly appreciated!

I can't reproduce your problem here. Which version of OpenWrt are you using?

I followed the HowtoEnableCron Wiki page and it works for me including "crontab -e".

(Last edited by olli on 10 Feb 2006, 12:42)

AFAIK, there's nothing magical about 'crontab -e'.

Why not just edit the /etc/crontab file directly?
ie:

vi /etc/crontab

As always, make a backup first :-)

try -c option to specify directory for crontabs dir.

if works fine for me. I don't know why not for you ... ?

(Last edited by _marc_ on 10 Feb 2006, 19:56)

I see this an oversight in the porting. Probably worth filing a low-priority bug-report.

I've just been symlinking one to the other, because I am in the habit of using crontab -e from other systems and having to remember that I vi  /etc/crontab instead on this box is annoying.

Did you follow the instructions?
http://wiki.openwrt.org/HowtoEnableCron … 72f326046e

Note the "ln -s /etc/crontabs /var/spool/cron/crontabs" line in the init script.

Oooh, good find, thanks. That script fixes things nicely.

Just do what I did, very simple, straightforward:

mkdir /etc/crontabs
cd /etc/init.d
cp S60cron S60cron.t
rm S60cron
mv S60cron.t S60cron
vi S60cron

Original file:
#!/bin/sh
[ -d /etc/crontabs ] && crond -c /etc/crontabs

And I added a couple lines so that it looks like this:
#!/bin/sh
mkdir -p /var/spool/cron
ln -s /etc/crontabs /var/spool/cron/
[ -d /etc/crontabs ] && crond -c /etc/crontabs