topic Re: Error in crontab -e in Operating System - Linux

Error in crontab -e

Waqar Razi — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:29:57 GMT

I am trying to create a cron job and I am getting the following error:

root# crontab -e
/bin/sh: emacs: command not found
crontab: "emacs" exited with status 127

Can some one please help me in that?

Thanks for your help

Re: Error in crontab -e

Michal Kapalka (mikap) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:41:45 GMT

hi,

your default editor is emacs, you could try tu use vi instead of emacs.

EDITOR=vi;
export EDITOR

mikap

Re: Error in crontab -e

Waqar Razi — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:33:17 GMT

I have checked. My default editor is set to vi. Still I am having this issue.

Can some one please help me?

Re: Error in crontab -e

Matti_Kurkela — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:41:45 GMT

Check your shell aliases & functions: perhaps the "crontab" command is aliased to something that changes the default editor for the duration of the crontab command.

Try running "which crontab": it should report the full pathname of the actual command run by the shell. If it's a shell function or alias, the command should display the function/alias definition.

If the response is the default "/usr/bin/crontab", verify that the crontab command has not been replaced with a custom script: run "file /usr/bin/crontab". If the response includes the word "text", it's most likely a script of some kind: read it to see what it actually does and where the real crontab command is hidden.

You could also invoke the crontab command with full pathname to stop shell aliases and functions from taking effect: i.e. "/usr/bin/crontab -e".

MK

Re: Error in crontab -e

Steven Schweda — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:13:59 GMT

> I have checked. [...]

Perhaps so, but we can't see what you checked
or how you checked it. You may know what
you're talking about, but you may not. How
can we (non-psychics) know what's true,
unless you show us some actual commands with
their actual output?

What does "man crontab" say about how it
chooses an editor for "-e" on this system
(which you have not identified in any way)?