Ubuntu ... cron problem

Tiggy · 03-26-2008, 06:27 PM

Hi guys,

I have some problems with a cronjob I created ... running the command manually works perfectly but ones I try to run it as cron it seems show the completed msg but nothing did happen ...

Any ideas?

Crontab -e:

Quote:

# m h dom mon dow command
#* * * * * date >> /tmp/cron_test.junk
* * * * * /home/tiggy/scripts/webcam.sh >> /home/tiggy/scripts/webcam.log

That date thing works fine ...

Also created a cron.allow

Quote:

tiggy@gecko:~/scripts$ cat /etc/cron.allow
root
tiggy

But since the date thing works that shouldn't be the problem ...

Actual script (webcam.sh)

Quote:

#!/bin/sh

sudo /usr/local/bin/zmu -m 1 -i

filename="Bloemen.jpg"
hostname="users.online.be"
username="****"
password="****"

/usr/bin/ftp -in $hostname <<EOF

quote USER $username
quote PASS $password

binary
send $filename /public_html/webcam/cam1.jpg
quit
EOF

echo "Script executed successfully"

As I said ... runned manually as regular user it works ... want to run this this as a regular user btw ... didn't try it as root

Any ideas?

BrianK · 03-26-2008, 08:51 PM

hmm... I'm curious as to why you have to sudo that zmu app? Maybe you should run this in root's cron instead? And are the args that you're passing in that sudo line for zmu or for sudo (I'm guessing zmu, in which case, wouldn't you want to put quotes around the command)? And how can you do a sudo without giving a password? I'll admit, I'm not that well versed in sudo, but those issues raised some warning flags for me.

Also, as a cleaner way to ftp, you may want to try ncftp. it gives a nice, command-line-friendly way to non-interactively transfer files via ftp. you would do something like

ncftpput -u $USER -p $PASS -m $HOST $REMOTE_DIR $LOCAL_FILE

Those are my ideas.

edit: oh wow, this was my 1,000th post. I'm officially a nerd now. Do I get an award or anything?

edit again: ahh... it appears I'm now listed as a "Senior Member". Break out the Champagne.

Tiggy · 03-27-2008, 01:46 AM

You can allow users to run certain commands as root without having to give a password (more info here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=223569)

zmu is part of zoneminder; some kind of security software and that program captures images ... /dev/video0 can only be accessed by root and I don't want to change that lol

As for the ncftp ... looks nicer and easier indeed

I just wonder why it works from the command line but not if executed in crontab? Any ideas? Is there any way to log all the script and crontab does?

Thx

Tiggy · 03-27-2008, 01:58 AM

Seems like it wasn't the cron giving problems ... I did reread the sudo manual and I made some mistake there :|

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