Try this command:

This should touch the file /test every minute, on the minute. It worked for me straight out of the (scratch)box. Try this command, if it works maybe your crontab syntax is rustier than you thought :P (just kidding!)
I am of absolutely no use in crontab syntax... all I know are the very basics. Nevertheless, I use it for some basic tasks on a (badly maintained, admittidely) Linux box I have at home.

*edit*

cron runs as root, so maybe you could/should leave out the "root" part from that statement. As for the run-parts... is that a separate bin or is it interpreted by cron itself (I didn't need to go too much into detail with the cron source to compile it)?