I am looking for an automated way to edit a crontab, as root I can use sed
and modify the file.  As a non root user I am not allowed to edit the file.

IS there a way to create a shell script that my userid can execute, that
will have root privileges to modify the command.  I want to send this to all
the workstations when installing some software?

Thansk

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 at 16:19 GMT, Tom wrote:
> I am looking for an automated way to edit a crontab, as root I can use sed
> and modify the file.  As a non root user I am not allowed to edit the file
.
>
> IS there a way to create a shell script that my userid can execute, that
> will have root privileges to modify the command.  I want to send this to a
ll
> the workstations when installing some software?

You don't need root privileges. Just edit a file and use crontab
to install it:

crontab -l > $HOME/crontab
fix_up $HOME/crontab ## script to edit crontab file
crontab $HOME/crontab

--
Chris F.A. Johnson                  http://cfaj.freeshell.org/shell
 ========================================
===========================
My code (if any) in this post is copyright 2004, Chris F.A. Johnson
and may be copied under the terms of the GNU General Public License

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom  <tcarmich@nortelnetworks.com> writes:

Tom> I am looking for an automated way to edit a crontab, as root I can use 
sed
Tom> and modify the file.  As a non root user I am not allowed to edit the f
ile.

Tom> IS there a way to create a shell script that my userid can execute, tha
t
Tom> will have root privileges to modify the command.  I want to send this t
o all
Tom> the workstations when installing some software?

If this is vixie cron, just set an env var to your script:

EDITOR=/your/script crontab -e

/your/script will get invoked with /tmp/some-name containing the crontab.
Just rewrite the file, and exit clean.  If the crontab is syntax-valid,
then it gets installed as the new crontab.

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment PERL training
!

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]