crontab question involving cvsup

[Joshua Tinnin]

On Thursday 26 August 2004 04:04 pm, "Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P." 
<kdk at daleco.biz> wrote:
> Joshua Tinnin wrote:
> >On Thursday 26 August 2004 08:28 am, "Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P."
> >
> ><kdk at daleco.biz> wrote:
> >>Unlike the system crontab, user crontabs, including root's, are
> >>under /var/cron; the file format is slightly different, and misuse
> >>of the system crontab for regular jobs is the cause of several
> >>FAQ posts we see here every few months or so; one of these goes
> >>something like, "why do I get an email from cron saying it can't
> >>complete my job, unknown user, etc. ??"....
> >
> >Again, I see nothing in the documentation warning against editing
> > the system crontab file, only that it can't be installed/edited
> > with the crontab command.
> >
> >- jt
>
> Well, you *can* do it that way ... but I wouldn't.  No flub up of
> mine when running mergemaster is going to touch /var/cron/tabs/root;
> OTOH, if I put my script calls in /etc/crontab ...

OK, what you said makes much more sense now. See, I'm the kind of person 
who has to know *exactly* why I shouldn't put my hand in the burning 
fire, or if not I just might do it ;)

> My point was that /etc/crontab is there for the machine, and
> per-user crontabs are there for the users --- and that includes
> root, so why not use it for what it's for?
>
> Of course, one of the nice things about BSD, if you know
> how and why, you can do it any way you like, almost...

Yes, although I do plan on upgrading to 5.3 (from 5.2.1) once it goes to 
STABLE, so it's probably best if I put this cron job in the primary 
user's crontab file.

- jt