XENIX 2.3.2 and cron

[Mark J. Bailey]

In article <1989Jul14.142929.22430 at berner.uucp>, richard at berner.uucp (r) writes:
> In article <104 at ssc.UUCP> fyl at ssc.UUCP (Phil Hughes) writes:
> >On a XENIX 386 Release 2.3.2 system we have a situation where
> >the cron process is started but it never executes.  If you kill it
> >and start another one, all is well.
> >
> >I remember a discussion of this some time ago but as I remember the
> >case was that if there was nothing to schedule for a long time it
> >would never run.  We have stuff scheduled at least every half hour.
> >
> >Any ideas?
> 
> I have had that same problem here on our 2.3.2 machine as well ever
> since we upgraded to 2.3.2.  When we reboot the machine, cron must
> be killed and restarted every time, or it will just sit in memory
> and never execute. It's just one of those things I have learned to
> live with, but it is still a pain.  

My cron has to be killed and restarted also!  But in my case, it is calling
up cron tables from many months ago!!!  No before anyone assumes that I
don't know what I am doing...:-)...I DO know how to use the crontab command
and have done so strictly according to the man page from cron(C).  The
funny thing is that up until a few months ago, when the problem started,
I had *NEVER* used the crontab command, and had *NEVER* had a lick of
trouble!  I used to edit the /usr/spool/cron/crontabs/* files directly,
save the changes, then kill cron and restart.  At boot time, cron came up 
without a hitch!  This is on Xenix 2.3.1 which I installed last October.
As I said, it was when I first used the crontab command that I noticed
my troubles begin.  Now, Iseem to be stuck with it.  I quit using the
crontab command and went back to the "old" way.  Still my boot up cron
process was loading an image of the tables from months ago.  I recently
went back to the crontab command, and still it boots with months old
tables.  I am curious about cron's internal tables.  Where are they?
Could that /usr/lib/cron/FIFO have something to do with it?  I have
scanned my entire filesystem looking for stray crontab files.  I have
purged all the crontab tables and used crontab to reenter them fresh!
Still no luck!  It boots with a cron image from way back.  If I kill 
the boot cron process (22 or 24) and restart, it takes off with all the
current tables!

I can't figure this one!  Please, someone, SCO ... HELP! :-()

(Sorry for this surge of emotion, but I can't get anywhere with it!)

Thanks,

Mark.

-- 
Mark J. Bailey                                    "Ya'll com bak naw, ya hear!"
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