[Bug 1564611] [NEW] cron ignoring last \n character in crontab file (apparently)

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Hello,

I posted this on launchpad Q&A and basically got the answer "if there is
in fact a linefeed character at the end of the last line then file a
bug" answer.  Here is the question I posted:

I'm trying to understand why cron is refusing to work with a certain
cron file.  The  manpage for crontab says:

"cron requires that each entry in a crontab end in a newline character.  If  the  last  entry  in  a
       crontab  is  missing  the  newline,  cron will consider the crontab (at least partially) broken and
       refuse to install it."

Given the following cron file:

<start>
# managed by Fabric$
$
SHELL=/bin/sh$
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin$
$
# m h dom mon dow user  command$
17 *    * * *   root    cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly$
25 6    * * *   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily )$
47 6    * * 7   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly )$
52 6    1 * *   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly )$
$
# Postgres monitoring$
*  *    * * *   postgres cd / && /etc/cron.d/pgup.sh$
*/5 *   * * *   postgres   cd / && /etc/cron.d/aws-scripts-mon/mon-put-instance-data.pl --mem-avail --disk-space-util --disk-path=/mnt$
$
# Postgres Backup$
00 00   * * *   postgres /etc/cron.d/pgbackup.sh$
</end>

Noting that the "$"character indicates a LF (vim unix format) character.
Case in point, if I search for \n then I get a match at the end of the
last line.   I also verified the fileformat using :set ff? which output
"fileformat=unix" in vim.

And I receive the following error in syslog when I restart cron:

"Mar 31 17:34:02 postgres-primary0 cron[30852]: (*system*) ERROR
(Missing newline before EOF, this crontab file will be ignored)"

And adding a blank line at the end of the cron file results in no error
when restarting cron.


Conclusion:

As far as I can tell the last entry does end in a newline character.  So
it seems like crontab is not recognizing it.

Is this a bug?  Maybe what was intended was that there be a newline on
its own line at the end of the file, in which case the documentation is
misleading.   Or possibly I'm not understanding "newline" correctly in
this context...Some clarification on this matter will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your time!

** Affects: cron (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: bot-comment
-- 
cron ignoring last \n character in crontab file (apparently)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1564611
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