OK, we might be making progress.
When I am in the AppVm, and run crontab -e, I am seeing the modified file above.
However, when I check the status of crond via sudo service crond status I see the following:
Redirecting to /bin/systemctl status crond.service
● crond.service - Command Scheduler
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/crond.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/crond.service.d
└─30_qubes.conf
Active: active (running) since Mon 2020-12-21 14:41:40 GMT; 8min ago
Main PID: 667 (crond)
Tasks: 1 (limit: 4840)
Memory: 1.5M
CPU: 168ms
CGroup: /system.slice/crond.service
└─667 /usr/sbin/crond -n
Dec 21 14:41:40 phd crond[667]: (CRON) STARTUP (1.5.5)
Dec 21 14:41:40 phd crond[667]: (CRON) INFO (Syslog will be used instead of sendmail.)
Dec 21 14:41:40 phd crond[667]: (CRON) INFO (RANDOM_DELAY will be scaled with factor 24% if used.)
Dec 21 14:41:40 phd crond[667]: (root) BAD FILE MODE (/etc/crontab)
Dec 21 14:41:40 phd crond[667]: (CRON) INFO (running with inotify support)
Dec 21 14:41:40 phd crond[667]: (CRON) INFO (@reboot jobs will be run at computer's startup.)
Dec 21 14:41:40 phd systemd[1]: Stopping Command Scheduler...
Dec 21 14:41:40 phd systemd[1]: crond.service: Succeeded.
Dec 21 14:41:40 phd systemd[1]: Stopped Command Scheduler.
Dec 21 14:41:40 phd systemd[1]: Started Command Scheduler.
The bit that is interesting is:
Dec 21 14:41:40 phd crond[667]: (root) BAD FILE MODE (/etc/crontab)
Thoughts?