All,

Below are cron scripts. These do not run. Cron logs shows it is activated. fetchmail.cron is in /etc/cron.hourly and if 'run-parts /etc/cron.hourly' is run the scripts run. Also scripts in cron.daily appear to run.

Thanks - Dan

cat of crontab:
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root
HOME=/

# run-parts
01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
05 * * * * root /etc/cron.hourly/fetchmail.cron
02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily
22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly

cat of fetchmail.cron
#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/fetchmail

What distribution are you running?

run-parts is a script that will run other programs in a single directory. Your fetchmail.cron script should run twice. Via run-parts and your second entry "05 * * * * root /etc/cron.hourly/fetchmail.cron".

Are there any scripts in /etc/cron.weekly or /etc/cron.monthly directories? If not then there is nothing to run.

http://nixdoc.net/man-pages/Linux/man8/run-parts.8.html

Thanks,

Yes, it should run twice. It does not run at all. When this gets debugged one will be removed.

The release is fc6. There are scripts in cron.daily and cron.weekly. They are running.

/etc/cron.hourly/fetchmail.cron runs the script.
run-parts /etc/cron.hourly/ also runs the script.

- Dan

What are the permission of your fetchmail script?
Is it executable?

permissions are ok, the script runs from

ls -altr /etc/cron.hourly/
total 32
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 14 21:05 .
drwxr-xr-x 101 root root 12288 Dec 24 04:03 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 Dec 25 19:44 fetchmail.cron

Fetchmail runs as a daemon - ie it can stay running once started so why not use that feature and put a mail-checking frequency in your .fetchtmailrc rather than using cron?

E.g. i use

set daemon 300

to make it check mail every 5 minutes

Thanks for the suggestion, however the script is still not working. Is there a way to create a detailed log? Cron log simply shows the script as being run. There is no error.

Dan

You could change the line in the script to:

/usr/bin/fetchmail 1>>fetch.log 2>&1

This would output any messages into a log and you can see if there are any errors.

Thanks for that tip. The output of the above is:

fetchmail: WARNING: Running as root is discouraged.
fetchmail: can't find a password for root@1.
fetchmail: WARNING: Running as root is discouraged.
fetchmail: can't find a password for root@1.
fetchmail: WARNING: Running as root is discouraged.
fetchmail: can't find a password for root@1.

Where does the password come from? The script runs when called from a bash shell. It gets the above error from cron. Is there a password associated with cron?

Thanks - Dan

The password seems to be the email login pass for root@1 which it thinks is the pop3 account to check. There are a few problems running programs with cron that use environmental variables. Usually you need to specify env vars in your script.

Does the script run normal from a bash shell while logged in as as root? Maybe check roots .fetchmailrc? Or maybe you need to copy .fetchmailrc to /etc/fetchmailrc to make it global.

I have always run fetchmail from my user account, I would suggest doing that and using the daemon feature though.

Thanks. The script has been moved from 'root' to another account. (the script was developed several years ago and not changed.)

The root@1 error resulted from the script call line that directed normal and error output to a file. That has been remove.

All the permissions have been updated. The script runs as: /home/../script. /etc/crontab has been changed to run as: account /home/../script.

Now we shall see. Thanks - Dan

This did not create a change. Below is the updated crontab. The scripts in cron.daily run. The script runs successfully as user 'buffer' with /home/buffer/fetchmail.cron

There does not seem to be anything missing.


SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root
HOME=/

# run-parts
01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
05 * * * * buffer /home/buffer/fetchmail.cron
02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily
22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly

/etc/cron.daily:
total 124
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 26 13:41 .
drwxr-xr-x 102 root root 12288 Dec 27 04:22 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 133 Jul 12 19:18 00webalizer
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 379 Oct 29 23:37 0anacron
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 39 Dec 26 13:37 0logwatch -> /usr/share/logwatch/scripts/logwatch.pl
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2936 Nov 28 05:16 beagle-crawl-system
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1042 Aug 17 08:22 certwatch
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 118 Nov 22 04:18 cups
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 180 Oct 1 13:26 logrotate
-rwxr-xr-x 1 dan dan 222 Dec 23 14:15 mailscript.cron
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 418 Jul 12 22:09 makewhatis.cron
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 137 Nov 26 04:04 mlocate.cron
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2181 Jun 21 2006 prelink
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 114 Sep 7 04:05 rpm
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 290 Jul 12 18:23 tmpwatch

/etc/cron.hourly:
total 32
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 14 21:05 .
drwxr-xr-x 102 root root 12288 Dec 27 04:22 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 buffer buffer 64 Dec 28 06:48 fetchmail.cron

cat fetchmail.cron
#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/fetchmail
[dan@server buffer]$ ls -al fetchmail.cron
-rwxr-xr-x 1 buffer buffer 32 Dec 28 12:01 fetchmail.cron

What does buffer's .fetchmailrc look like (without passwords of course)

Does putting 'export HOME=/home/buffer' in the rc file do any good?

Here it is. The script runs. I may try putting it in the daily. There is a script there that runs.

cat .fetchmailrc
defaults proto pop3
poll mail.xxx.com:
user dansawyer, fetchall, password xxxx is buffer here;
poll server.sawyer.home proto auto:
user buffer, keep, fetchall, password xxxxx, is dansawyer here;
poll server.sawyer.home proto auto:
user buffer, keep, fetchall, password xxxxx, is test here;
poll server.sawyer.home proto auto:
user buffer, keep, fetchall, password xxxxx, is netscape here;
poll server.sawyer.home proto auto:
user buffer, keep, fetchall, password xxxxx, is dan here;
poll server.sawyer.home proto auto:
user buffer, keep, fetchall, password xxxxx, is portable here;
poll server.sawyer.home proto auto:
user buffer, fetchall, password xxxxx, is laura here;

Did you try putting

export HOME=/home/buffer

in your fetchmail.cron?