crontab not observing EDITOR or VISUAL

[William Siddall]

Ubuntu 8.04
crontab -e uses nano editor even though EDITOR and VISUAL are set to /usr/bin/vi, as verified by echo's. Changing link from /usr/bin/editor to /usr/bin/vi (was linked to /bin/nano) causes crontab -e to work as expected.

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

I believe that this is because crontab is using /usr/bin/editor, rather than /usr/bin/sensible-editor, as suggested by Debian policy, section 11.4 of:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-customized-programs.html

I have filed a bug and submitted a patch upstream as well:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=482284

In the mean time, I have test packages for Hardy in my PPA:
https://edge.launchpad.net/~kirkland/+archive

I will attach a patch in my next post for Intrepid.

:-Dustin

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

Patch for Intrepid attached.

:-Dustin

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

Specifically to answer the reporter's question, you should NOT modify the /usr/bin/editor symlink by hand.

Instead, use:

sudo update-alternatives --config editor

And choose from the available editors.

:-Dustin

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

Patch updated to apply cleanly against cron version in Intrepid.

Requesting sponsorship...

:-Dustin

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package cron - 3.0pl1-104+ubuntu1

---------------
cron (3.0pl1-104+ubuntu1) intrepid; urgency=low

  * pathnames.h: Use the Debian sensible-editor (LP: #222830).
  * Modify Maintainer value to match the DebianMaintainerField
    specification.

 -- Dustin Kirkland <email address hidden> Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:42:25 -0500

[Artur Rona (ari-tczew)]

 cron (3.0pl1-107) unstable; urgency=low

   * debian/cron.pam: Use common-session-noninteractive in pam.d configuration
     instead of common-session so that libpam-ssh is not run. If libpam-ssh was
     installed the previous configuration resulted in cron spawning
     many ssh-agent processes (Closes: #572292)
   * debian/cron.init: Add Should-Start/Stop dependency to slapd so that cron
   * can start up tasks for users define in an LDAP (Closes: #557659, #546367)
   * Fix the use of perror so that the error message is correct when
     printing the reason why an operation failed. Thanks to
     Justin Pryzby for the patch. (Closes: 470587)
   * pathnames.h: Use /usr/bin/sensible-editor instead of /usr/bin/editor when
     calling crontab -e (Closes: #482284)
   * Fix debian/control description, thanks to Justin B Rye for the patch
     (Closes: #535227)
   * crontab.c: Produce a different warning message when root tries to setup a
     crontab for a user that is not allowed to do so, and do not log the
     action (Closes: #505288)
   * Only allow -i if -r has been specified previously (Closes: #513379)
   * Update debian/README.Debian to indicate that the package is
     being maintained at Alioth, thanks Tomas Pospisek for the patch
     (Closes: #511740)
   * crontab.c: Update the usage() call so that it refers to the use
     of -i when removing (-r)
   * crontab.1: Update the manpage:
      - Use the same option listing as in the crontab usage() call
      - Remove 'tweaked', explain what -u does in each context.
      - Remove V3, use 'Vixie Cron' instead
     (Closes: #572249)
      - Update the manpage years (Closes: #563296)
      - Describe the usage of the crontab group wrt /var/spool/cron/crontabs
     (Closes: #539182)
   * Use debhelper compatibility version 5
   * Include cross build support with patch to debian/rules provided by Neil
     Williams (Closes: #465077)
   * Change maintainer's email address

 -- Javier Fernandez-Sanguino Pen~a <email address hidden> Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:55:26 +0100