If I scp a cron file into /etc/cron.d it doesn't run unless I edit the file and change the command. Then crond seems to pick up the cron file.

How can I make cron reload its cron files in ubuntu 10.04? 'touch'ing the file doesn't work nor does 'restart cron' or 'reload cron'.

My cron file is set to run every minute and logs to a file. Nothing ends up in the log file until I edit the command, and there's no entry for it in /var/log/syslog

I'm stumped.

Here's my cron file saved to /etc/cron.d/runscript

# Runs the script every minute. This is safe because it will exit with success if it's already running
* * * * * www-data if [ -f /usr/local/bin/thing ]; then exec /usr/bin/php /usr/local/bin/thing mode:prod -a 14 -d >> /var/log/thing/mything.log 2>&1; else echo `date +'[%D %T]'` "Thing not deployed. Command not run\n" >> /var/log/thing/mything.log; fi &