A far safer way to edit crontab

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A far safer way to edit crontab

A far safer way to edit crontab

craig fielding

A far safer method of editing your crontab file is like this:

#crontab -l > local_file
#vi local_file
#crontab local_file

The first command copies the user's crontab to a file where it can be safely edited. If a mistake is made it will not effect the actual crontab entry. Once the user has edited their file, they can active that file by using the last command listed above.

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This was first published in September 2002

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