[krunaldo]

crontab -e is the way to edit your cron. A similar command exists for editing the sudoers file which is visudo. This will ensure your configuration is a valid syntax as well as do an atomic swap of the file.

Otherwise adding a file or deleting a file in /etc/cron.d/ is the way to go for automatic(ansbile, puppet etc) and package installations.

[krrrh]

I'm surprised that people would edit cron in any other way, crontab -e is one of the first commands most intro to Linux manuals teaches.

However crontab -r has to be one of the most poorly thought out commands in UNIX. It removes the cron file and since r is only one character over from e on qwerty keyboards it's a painful and surprising typo.

[mooneater]

first thing when logging into new server: place /etc under git. then loss of cron files (or any config file) is easily recovered from.

[pferde]

Except that crontabs are usually somewhere in /var. :)

[mooneater]

Which is why I only use system-wide crontabs, in /etc/cron.d

Instead of per-user crontabs. Much easier to manage.

With cron.d you can specify what user each cron entry should run as, so it is equivalent.

[Drdrdrq]

This is a brilliant idea - thank you!

[mooneater]

I cannot count the number of times this has helped or saved me. You can keep the /etc git repo local. Or if its a critical server, push to github private repo. Seeing a history of your /etc edits is a very reassuring feeling.

[efiala]

what if you are managing the crons externally, eg puppet, crontab -e is not always option

[Godel_unicode]

1. If you don't have a test process for changes made with puppet, this is hardly a problem with cron.

2. Puppet handled that parsing for you and will throw errors if your syntax is wrong

[_ao789]

I can't tell you the amount of times I've hit -r by mistake and regretted it..

[michaelcampbell]

I can. 0. There, more anecdata.

Honestly though, I never use `-e` either. I keep a ~/.crontab and edit that, and then `crontab ~/.crontab`.

Voila, backup/time machine/git friendly crontab.

[benjojo12]

I got bit by this once, and had to rescue the crontab out off the disk with GNU strings :(

[dajohnson89]

Have a cronjob that backs up your crontab?

[hibbelig]

Use /bin/cat as editor. That should work nicely from Puppet.

[Animats]

crontab -e is the way to edit your cron. A similar command exists for editing the sudoers file which is visudo. This will ensure your configuration is a valid syntax as well as do an atomic swap of the file.

And there's "vipw" for the password file. Each of them with their own separate updating bugs.