Excellent advice from Michael, as always. On 2002.07.29 23:01 Michael Brown wrote:

Even nicer:

While in your home directory (or anywhere else you don't mind storing your crontab file) : crontab -l > crontab ci -l crontab

In case you need it, to track back through any revisions you have made, you will need to use the command co -r1.3 -l crontab where 1.3 corresponds to the version of the crontab you wish to use. (Versions are numbered, by rcs, conventionally from 1.1 ascending, as you proceed through.) The -l ensures the file is locked for you to revise (and will place a rw copy for you to edit). If you leave out the -l, you'll get a ro copy. Don't worry about overwriting your existing file with an earlier revision. As long as you don't delete the crontab,v file that rcs makes, you can always unpack a later revision again later on. Managing revisions sensibly requires a little bit of care. The rcs file holds notes of locks imposed as you check revisions out for editing. If you need to remove a lock, you'll need rcs -u1.3 crontab I could go on, but the man pages on the rcs suite are quite good. Look at those for ci, co and rcs as a first step. (By the by, Michael's 'killer' package, Lyx, has built-in facilities for using rcs to control versions of documents which is an amazing bonus!) If you prefer to use CVS, you might also want to look at pharmacy or lincvs, both of which are graphical front ends for the cvs system Michael recommended as a more powerful means of version control. Managing revisions is getting a little further away from your original enquiry, but might even be worth a thread of its own. Thanks for raising it, Michael. Andrew -- ******************************************************************************** E-Mail: aray@computerpark.co.uk ********************************************************************************