I have a cronjob that is supposed to run daily at 12am. I don't think it is run by crond, because the log says it is run at 1:05 which is when anacron makes sure all the cron jobs got run (65 minutes later). Anyway, /var/log/cron says the job started at 1:05 and gives the command the job was supposed to execute, but the job does not execute. Looks like it is being run as root too. I don't know where to go from here, any ideas? thanks.

Oh ya, the script is an executable and I do launch it manually with success everyday.

If you have tested this as a script that runs fine from the command line, you probably need to be aware that cron jobs don't do a login as such, and therefore don't have paths and environment variables set that your script may be expecting. You may need to set variables and paths explicitly, or call utilities and programs with full pathnames.

I expect there's a HOWTO for running cron jobs, but I haven't used it. That may be another resource you'll find helpful.

-Alan

Thanks for your post. My script does not use any variables. It just gives paths to launch a perl program with certain switches. It used to work until I had to rebuild my stuff on another server. So I don't think the problem is with the script. Any other ideas? anybody?

Have you tried just creating a simple, do-something-simple cron job just to verify that you are able to run cron jobs at all?

0 10 * * * /usr/bin/date >> /home/me/crontest.log

or something like that to see if it actually does something when you run it. Some systems you are locked out of cron unless specifically allowed. Verify that you are able to run cron first, then see what else may be the problem if it works.

Another thought, if this worked on a different system, is this a different distribution or version? Options may be different, or paths may not be the same; you may need to check if everything is where the job expects to find it, and whether the options are the same on the new system.

-Alan

Your script may implicitly be using variables (PATH for one). Can you post the script here (within [ code ] tags) so we can take a look?

the script it is calling is executable, but I just saw that the cronjob is not an executable. I just changed this and will see if it works. if not, will post the script. thanks.

it worked now. basics first!