Console hanging when saving crontab

[Reuben Ernest]

Hi all,
This is regarding the console hanging when saving a crontab entry. Once the console hangs, we need to telnet and kill the console. The version of OS is 11 and sudo is installed on the system.
Could somebody help me out on this.

[harry d brown jr]

What does this mean?

console hanging when saving a crontab entry

???

Are you using an editor like "vi" or "emacs"??

What kind of console?


live free or die
harry

[Michael Tully]

Hi,

Be sure that you are using the right type of terminal on your console. If you are using an incorrect emulation you will have all sorts of problems.

-Michael

[Reuben Ernest]

I am using vi as my editor.
After editing, i try to save by wq! and it returns an error message says "read input error" and then console hangs. When i try to reset the console Ctrl/d and power cycle the monitor, i get a message saying "Enter to clear screen" but the console does not respond to any keyboard inputs.

[Animesh Chakraborty]

Hi,
Do
#export TERM=hp
#crontab -e to edit
If problem still persists then check /etc/inittab file for the entry of console.

How about this
#banner hello >/dev/console ?

[Michael Tully]

Hi,

Does the console hang when only attempting
to do cron entries or any vi editing?

It is good practise to never use crontab -e
as in this scenario you may end up with no
crontab at all.

In regards to your console, you tried to
plug in a different console to test?

Michael

[Reuben Ernest]

Thanks to everyone....rebooted the server and now I am able to save the file. Not sure if the swap file had anything to do with it. Now only 12% of swap is used and stupid me never checked the swap size before...Thanks all. Still would like to know what really happened though :)

[Peter Kloetgen]

Hi Reuben,

is it possible, that you had a vi .swap-file for your crontab? This is made when you are closing vi- editor in a non- normal way. That may cause a problem like described.

Allways stay on the bright side of life!

Peter