Re: user unable to access "crontab -e"

On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 05:33:57 -0600, D. R. Evans wrote:
> Greg Wooledge wrote on 7/1/26 8:19 PM:
> 
> > 
> > Without -b, we can deduce that the Kate command line process is
> > sending the edit request to an "already running Kate instance", and
> > then terminating, at which point crontab checks the file, sees no
> > change, and reports the lack of changes, leaving the installed crontab
> > unchanged.
> 
> Yes... except that I wasn't using any other instance of kate, so it's still
> not entirely clear (to me, anyway) why I had to change the value of $VISUAL.
> [Something to do with the way the editor is invoked by crontab, perhaps?]
> 
> I now have this issue filed in my voluminous mental "I don't understand
> this, but I have other things I need to worry about" file.

Try running "kate -n" or maybe "kate -n /tmp/xxx" in a terminal and see
what happens.  Does it open a GUI window and then give you a new shell
prompt in the terminal immediately?

Then, try adding the -b option and see how that changes the behavior.