Cron on debian won't actually do anything!!! Please help!

Plastech · 05-23-2007, 06:37 PM

My cron setup on debian seems to be configured properly but won't actually run anything. Here are the diagnostics I have come up with on my own....

1) Running date shows that the clock is setup properly
2) Running "ps aux | grep cron" returns two results

Code:

root .......  /usr/sbin/cron
frame .......  grep cron

3) I put the following at the head of my cron

Code:

MAILTO=""
* * * * * echo "foobar"

And haven't gotten any output in the past 15 minutes....

Any ideas?

Thanks,
TotallyNewbtastic Plastech

Tinkster · 05-23-2007, 07:04 PM

Where would you expect the output to go?

Try

Code:

* * * * * echo "foobar" >> /tmp/running

Cheers,
Tink

Plastech · 05-23-2007, 07:09 PM

And that's why I'm retarded. Thanks.

Plastech · 05-23-2007, 07:13 PM

Hmm...now my problem seems to be that cron doesn't run the scripts as the user but as a sort of anonymous account. Is there a way around this?

Tinkster · 05-23-2007, 07:16 PM

Quote:

And that's why I'm retarded. Thanks.

Not retarded .... "not yet very experienced" :}

Cheers,
Tink

Tinkster · 05-23-2007, 07:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plastech

Hmm...now my problem seems to be that cron doesn't run the scripts as the user but as a sort of anonymous account. Is there a way around this?

How did you edit crontab?

As the system user you need for the frame, doing
crontab -e
?

Cheers,
Tink

Plastech · 05-23-2007, 07:32 PM

Yes, logged in as "frame" ran crontab -e. Cron then launches a shell script which ends with "startx" (which really just starts a feh slideshow thanks to .xsession settings). Trouble is, when the shell script is called with cron, I get:

Code:

xauth: creating new authority file /home/frame/.serverauth.4008

X: user not authorized to run the X server, aborting.
giving up.
xinit:  Connection refused (errno 111): unable to connect to X server
xinit:  No such process (errno 3):  Server error.
Couldnt get a file descriptor referring to the console

Plastech · 05-23-2007, 07:42 PM

Do you think I ought to start a new thread about this?

Okay I will....I'll post in the general forum. Thanks for solving my other problem, though.

Tinkster · 05-23-2007, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plastech

Yes, logged in as "frame" ran crontab -e. Cron then launches a shell script which ends with "startx" (which really just starts a feh slideshow thanks to .xsession settings). Trouble is, when the shell script is called with cron, I get:

Code:

xauth: creating new authority file /home/frame/.serverauth.4008

X: user not authorized to run the X server, aborting.
giving up.
xinit:  Connection refused (errno 111): unable to connect to X server
xinit:  No such process (errno 3):  Server error.
Couldnt get a file descriptor referring to the console

I don't think an other thread is called for :}

That said: can the user run startx from the shell? And what does the
cron entry for this look like now?

Cheers,
Tink

Plastech · 05-23-2007, 08:13 PM

Well, I didn't fix the problem, but I sort of hacked it. I guess the startx command needed to go through the console, which apparently it doesn't in cron. I changed /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config to allow anyone (not just the console) to startx, and now it is working. Problem of course is that whole security business.....