One of our CentOS 5.3 installations is showing the following (sanitized) error:

crond [nnnnnn]: (*system*) BAD FILE MODE (/etc/crontab)

Most/all of the postings I've seen based on a Google search pins that down to a permissions problem on a crontab job and suggests doing a chmod 644; however, the error message usually includes the specific job giving the problem. In our case it doesn't. How should we interpret this error and what do we need to do to fix it.

Many thanks for your help!