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Q&A VISUAL=gvim makes crontab -e open a new crontab instead of a current one

My VISUAL setup interferes with my cron jobs. crontab -l works all right, I see my previous jobs. crontab -e, crontab -e -u user-here - opens GVIM on an empty file checked cron.allow or .deny,...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by LAFK‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Quasímodo‭

Question cron
#1: Initial revision by user avatar LAFK‭ · 2023-11-12T07:49:43Z (about 1 year ago)
VISUAL=gvim makes crontab -e open a new crontab instead of a current one
My VISUAL setup interferes with my cron jobs. 

 1. `crontab -l` works all right, I see my previous jobs.
 2. `crontab -e`, `crontab -e -u user-here` - opens GVIM on an empty file
 3. checked cron.allow or .deny, nothing, did add cron.allow with my user, nothing changed
 4. 1 and 2 are even AFTER I've added my user to `crontab` group - `sudo usermod -aG crontab user-here`. This made it see the `/var/spool/cron/crontabs` dir (but not the user crontab file inside?). 
 5. `sudo crontab -e -u user-here` - opens Vim on my desired file **that's the workaround fellas, not a fix, but gets the job done**
 6. `vim /var/spool/cron/crontabs/your-user-here` works and opens the file as expected, allows edition, but then you have to `kill -1 your-cron-demon-here`, or sent the SIGHUP another way, so cron process knows to re-check config files. A much worse workaround.

So, now I know it's the editor setup. Cron looks at two variables `VISUAL` and `EDITOR`, so I checked my configs and sure, I had VISUAL set (`VISUAL=gvim`). I've reset it, opened a new terminal and nothing.

## Works as I want crontab -e to work

1. `sudo crontab -e -u your-user-here`
2. `VISUAL=""; crontab -e`

How to "fix" visual editor so it opens my crontab, and not an empty one?