[SOLVED] Cron ignoring changes made in file

pbr85at · 03-21-2015, 03:51 AM

Hi,

i have a small problem on my system... I recently wrote a small bash script and added it via crontab -u root -e and it's executed as it should.
Then a few days after i did edit my bash script, but once it is run by cron it doesn't reflect the changes i made to the script. I did manually restart crond, tryed sync, moved my script, renamed it even rstart the server - no success.
If i run my script manually it returns me the expected output.
part of my script (/root/sd.sh):

Code:

#!/bin/sh

echo -n "Checking Raid... "
RAID=`tw-cli /c0/u0 show status | cut -c17-31 | grep -ci OK`
RAIDSTATUS=`tw-cli /c0/u0 show status | head -n1 | cut -c17-31`
if [ $RAID -eq 0 ]; then
  VERIFYING=`tw-cli /c0/u0 show status | cut -c17-31 | grep -ci VERIFYING`
  REBUILDING=`tw-cli /c0/u0 show status | cut -c17-31 | grep -ci REBUILDING`
  if [ $VERIFYING -eq 1 ]; then
    CURRENTSTATUS=`tw-cli /c0/u0 show verifystatus | head -n1 | cut -c46-49`
  fi
  if [ $REBUILDING -eq 1 ]; then
    CURRENTSTATUS=`tw-cli /c0/u0 show rebuildstatus | head -n1 | cut -c47-50`
  fi
  echo "Raid is busy (Raid $RAIDSTATUS$CURRENTSTATUS)"
  exit 1
fi
echo "Raid is idle (Raid $RAIDSTATUS)"

echo -n "Checking for logged in Users... "
USERS=`who | wc -l`
if [ $USERS -gt 0 ]; then
  echo "Users online"
  exit 1
fi
echo "None logged in"

crontab -l :

Code:

root@monster:~# crontab -l
# Edit this file to introduce tasks to be run by cron.
#
# Each task to run has to be defined through a single line
# indicating with different fields when the task will be run
# and what command to run for the task
#
# To define the time you can provide concrete values for
# minute (m), hour (h), day of month (dom), month (mon),
# and day of week (dow) or use '*' in these fields (for 'any').#
# Notice that tasks will be started based on the cron's system
# daemon's notion of time and timezones.
#
# Output of the crontab jobs (including errors) is sent through
# email to the user the crontab file belongs to (unless redirected).
#
# For example, you can run a backup of all your user accounts
# at 5 a.m every week with:
# 0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/
#
# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)
#
# m h  dom mon dow   command
*/10 * * * * /root/sd.sh | logger
*/30 * * * * /root/dropbox.sh > /dev/null

syslog:

Code:

Mar 21 09:10:01 monster /USR/SBIN/CRON[3998]: (root) CMD (/root/sd.sh | logger)
Mar 21 09:10:01 monster logger: Checking Raid... Raid is busy (Raid )
Mar 21 09:17:01 monster /USR/SBIN/CRON[4045]: (root) CMD (   cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Mar 21 09:20:01 monster /USR/SBIN/CRON[4105]: (root) CMD (/root/sd.sh | logger)
Mar 21 09:20:01 monster logger: Checking Raid... Raid is busy (Raid )
Mar 21 09:30:01 monster /USR/SBIN/CRON[4266]: (root) CMD (/root/sd.sh | logger)
Mar 21 09:30:01 monster /USR/SBIN/CRON[4265]: (root) CMD (/root/dropbox.sh > /dev/null)
Mar 21 09:30:01 monster logger: Checking Raid... Raid is busy (Raid )

when i run sh /root/sd.sh

Code:

root@monster:~# sh /root/sd.sh
Checking Raid... Raid is idle (Raid OK)
Checking for logged in Users... Users online
root@monster:~#

Any ideas why? - any help or thoughts appreciated

regards
Pat

joe_2000 · 03-21-2015, 07:07 PM

Normally you should not have to restart cron or anything. Cron reads the script on every invokation.

The problem is not obvious to me, but here are a few thoughts on how to debug it:

- I see that you manually invoked it with "sh /root/sd.sh"... Why not "/root/sd.sh"? That does not make it 100% comparable to the cron entry. Is your script executable at all? If it isn't, run

Code:

chmod +x /root/sd.sh

- To check that your script changes are seen by cron, add a line at the beginning of sd.sh that says something like

Code:

touch /tmp/cron.test

Is the file /tmp/cron.test created on the next cron run? If it is, this means that your problem is not that changes are not taken into account, but that something else still isn't quite right.

- Are you sure that everything was done under root? Maybe something is lying around in a user crontab?

- Note that you only have a very limited $PATH variable content in the cron environment. If your script calls other scripts (tw-cli ?) it's best to call them with their full path.

- Consider echoing the contents of your variables to a text file to check what they get assigned to. Maybe that'll give you a hint on what goes wrong.

pbr85at · 03-22-2015, 07:12 AM

Hi, thank you for the hints - you were right, it's not cron ignoring my code, it's the issue in the script, especially what you pointed out below:

Quote:

Originally Posted by joe_2000

- Note that you only have a very limited $PATH variable content in the cron environment. If your script calls other scripts (tw-cli ?) it's best to call them with their full path.

i'm calling tw-cli not with it's full path /usr/sbin/tw-cli and it's working !!!
fyi, tw-cli is the cmd line interface for my 3ware hardware raid controller.

thank you very much

regards
Pat

joe_2000 · 03-22-2015, 01:33 PM

You are welcome, glad that you've been able to get it working