Trouble-shooting Cron Problems FreeBSD5.4

[Martin McCormick]

	After building a new FreeBSD5.4 system, I have done
something bad to it.

	When cron runs jobs in /etc/crontab as operator, it seems
as if that 6TH field in /etc/crontab is being interpreted as a
command rather than the user ID it is supposed to run under.  I
keep getting messages like:

From:    operator at system.domainname (Cron Daemon)
Subject: Cron <operator at system> root	newsyslog


root: not found


	Comparing this system with another properly-functioning
5.4 system has, as of yet, shown nothing unusual.  If I become
root and manually run the job in question, it runs without a
complaint.

	The crontab file on the problem system is an exact copy
of the crontab file on the working system.  Both crons appear to
be running with the same flags as in

  465  ??  Ss     3:24.39 /usr/sbin/cron -s

	Any suggestions as to what I should look at next?  Both
systems' crons are showing the same environments if I make them
run the env command.  Many thanks.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Network Operations Group