Cannot get crontab to run

uncle-c · 02-11-2008, 09:13 AM

Hello there,
Having some crontab woes I'm afraid. I would like to run the "my-cron" script at 30 mins past the hour but its having nothing of it. Below is some output if it helps.

Code:

[zod@PCLOS2007 temp]$ ls
cronzod  mplay.zip  my-cron*  Vintage_Flower.png  wft

[zod@PCLOS2007 temp]$ cat my-cron
#!/bin/bash

cp /home/zod/temp/wft /home/zod/temp/test

[zod@PCLOS2007 temp]$ cat cronzod
30 * * * * /home/zod/temp/my-cron

[zod@PCLOS2007 temp]$ sudo crontab -l -u zod
30 * * * * /home/zod/temp/my-cron

As you can see my-cron file is executable. I've tested it independently and it works fine, and the "cronzod" file seems ok, or does it !!!??

Thanks,
uncle

akuma_linux · 02-11-2008, 10:02 AM

Hi uncle-c

Try this in your cronzod file :

Code:

30 * * * * /home/zod/temp/./my-cron

mahmoud · 02-11-2008, 10:10 AM

are you running it under the right user
check who owns the file and under which user is the crontab installed

anomie · 02-11-2008, 11:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by uncle-c

I would like to run the "my-cron" script at 30 mins past the hour but its having nothing of it. Below is some output if it helps.

Code:

...
[zod@PCLOS2007 temp]$ sudo crontab -l -u zod
30 * * * * /home/zod/temp/my-cron

[ Side note: stop using sudo to run crontab commands for zod. Do it directly as zod. ]

To isolate this down to a cron issue or an issue with your script, use crontab -e as the zod user, and make an entry:

Code:

* * * * * echo 'Hello from cron'

After a couple minutes, check mail for zod -- you should see mail messages with 'Hello from cron' in the body.

If that doesn't work, do you have /etc/cron.allow or /etc/cron.deny files? If so, what's in 'em?

uncle-c · 02-12-2008, 06:05 AM

Thanks for the replies everyone. The problem lay in the fact that I had no cron.allow file, hence, I had to use sudo to run the crontab command. This resulted in the /var/spool/cron/zod file having group and owner root. Once I created cron.allow and put user zod in it all was well and there was no need for me to run the sudo command when using crontab. All scripts execute perfectly.
Thanks for all the help !

Cheers,
uncle-c