Cron versions (Was: [Scottish] fetchmail)

[iain d broadfoot]

* Martin McCarthy (marty@ancient-scotland.co.uk) wrote:
> > the ``allan'' is the user the command is to run as.
>=20
> Interesting.  Which version of cron takes that as a field in the
> crontab?  I've never seen that before.

=66rom my crontab(5)

       The  format of a cron command is very much the V7 standard, with a n=
um-
       ber of upward-compatible extensions.  Each line has five time and  d=
ate
       fields,  followed  by  a command, followed by a newline character ('=
0).
       The system crontab (/etc/crontab) uses the same format, except that =
the
       username  for  the  command is specified after the time and date fie=
lds
       and before the command. The fields may be separated by spaces or  ta=
bs.
       Note  that  if the line does not have a trailing newline character, =
the
       entire line will be silently ignored by both crontab and cron; the c=
om-
       mand will never be executed.

and from cron's changelog

	Another change made for the same reason
	is the ability to read in an /etc/crontab file which has an extra field in
	each entry, between the time fields and the command.  This field is a user
	name, and it permits the /etc/crontab command to contain commands which are
	to be run by any user on the system.  /etc/crontab is not "installed" via
	the crontab(1) command; it is automatically read at startup time and it wi=
ll
	be reread whenever it changes.

It seems to have been the release of V3, circa '93.

might be time for you to upgrade. :D

iain

--=20
"If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not rightly owned if it =
is
not shared." -- St. Augustine

"As for compromises: no. Free or fuck off." -- Andrew Suffield, on debian-l=
egal