Hi everyone,

I have a small script that pings a certain address and sends me a text message on my cell if the ping goes down for too long. The script works fine, if I run it as root from the command line (and the ping I am testing is down), I get the text message.

The issue is when I put it in roots crontab. I can see in /var/log/cron that its being run. The entry I have in the cron is as follows:

0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * /usr/local/bin/pingtest.pl

/var/log/cron shows:

Jun 19 17:15:01 kngvsl001 crond[15884]: (root) CMD (/usr/local/bin/pingtest.pl)
Jun 19 17:20:01 kngvsl001 crond[16024]: (root) CMD (/usr/local/bin/pingtest.pl)
Jun 19 17:25:01 kngvsl001 crond[16881]: (root) CMD (/usr/local/bin/pingtest.pl)
Jun 19 17:30:01 kngvsl001 crond[17259]: (root) CMD (/usr/local/bin/pingtest.pl)

* Also I also added another job to the cron, and I'm not getting emails from it either. I've restarted the cron daemon, but it still doesn't work.

This is on a RHEL5.1 virtual box. It must be something simple, but I'm sure not seeing it.

Thanks for any suggestions you might have.

-Shawn

Show the pingtest.pl command.

The cron environment is more restrictive, for security. Many environment variables and typical shell variables are unset. Cron's STDOUT and STDERR also goes to email by default (otherwise, where would it go ?).

Hi Mr. C. thanks for the quick reply.

heres the basic script:

#!/usr/bin/perl

# variables
$router = "xx.xx.xx.xx";
$admin1 = "xxxxxxxxxx\@msg.telusmobility.com";
$netdev = "eth0";
$msgsub = "BELL Internet Router - Kanata - DOWN";
$msgbody = "Time to Panic!";

sub pingtest($$) {
my ($ping) = @_;
system(sprintf("ping -q -I %s -c 1 %s>/dev/null", $netdev, $ping));
$retcode = $? >> 8;
# ping returns 1 if unable to connect
return $retcode;
}

$test1 = &pingtest($router);

if ($test1 eq "1") {
$test2 = &pingtest($router); # test again in case it was just a brief blip
if ($test2 eq "1") { # ok we're down lets alert
system(sprintf("echo \"%s\"|/bin/mail -s \"%s\" %s", $msgbody,$msgsub, $admin1));
exit(1);
}
}
exit(0);

Simple trick, I was having issues with rsync running as a cronjob. Why no idea.. However, I had the cronjob run a script, which in turn ran my rsync script.

Try that for a test and post back.

Try setting the MAILTO environment variable in your crontab:

and run again to see what happens.

A couple of points to note:

1) no need to use sprintf. Interpolate variables directly into your string:

becomes
Do the same with your other system() call:
2) You've defined pingtest to take two arguments:
but are passing only one:
3) Calling your ping routine twice in rapid succession is not better than increasing the -C count. It is very unlikely you will catch a window of time where the first run fails, but the second run succeeds.

4) Consider using the Net::Ping::External module (http://search.cpan.org/~chorny/Net-P...12/External.pm)

Do you know about smokeping ?

Well do I feel sheepish. After a good nights sleep I immediately noticed that i had neglected to name the script with the .pl at the end, but had used that in the crontab command. I'll go back under my rock now....

Thanks for all the replies, and thanks Mr. C. for your suggestions, I'll look at improving the script. I'm more of an admin than a programmer.

Thanks again,
-Shawn

1. don't use
&pingtest($router);

the leading '&' is deprecated unless you mean pass a sub-reference

2. Change

sub pingtest($$) {
my ($ping) = @_;

to

sub pingtest
{
my ($ping) = $_[0];

scalar, not array


3. anytime you call an external prog in cron, use the full absolute path, due (as mentioned above) to the fact that the env for cron is minimal, so use

/bin/ping blah blah

4. last but not least add warnings and strict thus

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

as the top of your code.