Hello all. I'm running into a bit of a problem configuring the crontab file. I'm relatively new to Linux so please bear with me. I'm trying to get seti at home to run on startup, and following the instructions provided with the program the following is the entry I should make in the crontab file...
0 1,5,9,13,17,21 * * * cd <setidir>; ./setiathome -nice 19 > /dev/null 2> /dev/null

Where <setdir> is I specified the directory where setiathome is.
According to the instructions this should run seti at startup, then check every 4 hours to verify that it is running. The problem is seti doesnt start when I reboot my machine.
I added this line to the /etc/crontab file. When that didnt work I created a crontab file for my user. when that didnt work I created a crontab file for root. still nothing. There is no cron.deny or cron.allow files so I assume that my user specific crontab file is valid (this is what I am currently using.
I verified that crond is running, and have tried several variables to the above command. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, and have a great day.

Why not use inittab if you want it to always run no matter what?

in /etc/inittab

zz:12345:respawn:/sbin/my_deamon

The inittab line consists of an arbitrary (but unique) two charater identification string and (in this case zz), followed by the run levels this program should be run in, then the respawn keyword, and finally the full path to the command. init should respawn another copy whenever it exits. After/IF you make changes to your inittab, be sure to send a HUP to init so it will reload it's configuation. The quick way is:

# kill -HUP 1

Looks like it should work. Rather than doing a cd you can put the full path to setiathome and put the cd in that file. Also you can use */4 to specify "in increments of 4 hours", which would make an entry like this:
0 */4 * * * root /path/to/setiathome -nice 19 > /dev/null 2> /dev/null

Do you get any errors in /var/log/syslog ? Or is root getting any email errors?

Thanks for the help guys. I left it go and came back a few hours later to find seti at home running. for some reason it just wont run at startup weird.
Have a great day.