Hello All , I have serached to no avail , for any help on this problem .
The problem is VERY evident from the below entries ... Tia , JimL

ps: slackware 14.2 , Last updated 2019-Jul-14
pps: Prior to this on 14-Apr-2019 , I had been receiving cron process emails , See more below (*) .


crontab -l
...snip
#
# Testing the email of output from here ...
*/5 * * * * /bin/echo " Testing the email of output from here ..."
...snip


tail -10 /var/log/cron
...snip
Jul 15 15:25:01 ns4 crond[6386]: FILE /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root USER root PID 25844 /bin/echo " Testing the email of output from here ..."
Jul 15 15:25:01 ns4 crond[25844]: unable to create mail file /var/spool/cron/cron.ZpnPN4/cron.root.6386: cron output for user root /bin/echo " Testing the email of output from here ..." to /dev/null


(*)
Between the last & now non-email capable cron , I compiled & Installed the below , All other items had been installed for some many weeks prior to the last cron processed email .

4 drwxr-xr-x 7 jiml users 4096 Jun 2 17:53 libmnl-1.0.4/
4 drwxr-xr-x 8 jiml users 4096 Jun 2 17:59 libnftnl-1.1.3/
4 drwxr-xr-x 12 jiml users 4096 Jun 2 18:02 iptables-1.8.3/

Between the last & now non-email capable cron , I Installed these updates ...

32 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 30087 Apr 7 04:00 ghostscript-9.26-x86_64-1_slack14.2
32 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 31715 Apr 7 04:00 httpd-2.4.39-x86_64-1_slack14.2
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2010 Apr 7 04:00 openjpeg-2.3.1-x86_64-1_slack14.2
8 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4710 Apr 7 04:00 wget-1.20.3-x86_64-1_slack14.2

These were the ones that when cron ran I did not get in email ...
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1460 Apr 21 04:00 libpng-1.6.37-x86_64-1_slack14.2
8 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8185 Apr 21 04:00 libssh2-1.8.2-x86_64-1_slack14.2

Does the parent directory, /var/spool/cron/cron.ZpnPN4, exist before you do the cron run?

It is telling you it can't create the file cron.root.6386. Since it is running as root permissions generally wouldn't be an issue (unless you're using ACLs or SELINUX) so it is more likely it can't find the parent directory.

P.S. While you CAN run a command line separated by semi-colons within cron it is usually better to put the commands in a script and run the script from cron.

There can be some errors in partition or disk. Check logs for filesystem or disk errors. For sure you can run fsck.

Hello All , Please NOTE: This system was able to send emails of cron runs and stopped after Apr-14-2019 , I am not aware of any changes I have made that should/would/could stop such functionality .

@MensaWater , As far as I can tell that directory does not exist at anytime after restart , But the drcon manpage says it will automatically create a unique path at run time . That echo doesn't last very long . I beleive I have tried recreating the mentioned path , but I atm have no memory of the findings , so will try recreating it again . But at start up rc.M will just re-delete it again . Check slackware-14.2 /etc/rc.d/rc.M you'll see the rm -rf ...
The system is not running SElinux or setup for ACL's atm .
Fyi , I have NO commands in my crontab that use semi-colons , Which is something I've never tried , well maybe ince 15 years or so ago .

@Labinnah , A possible problem I had not thought of , But the system is a (semi-)virtual system that I am renting & I'd forogt to mention that fact too .

Thank you both for the idea's , Please do keep the ideas coming , as soon someone will ping back with a thought that has not come across my mind in the last 5 days , I should have started working on this difficuty back in Apr-2019 , But things as usual got inbetween .

Tia , JimL

This not exclude filesystem problem. If you cannot check that, ask owner.

If you want all ideas I have three more, but they are highly unlikely.
- Restart crond, process local filesystem copy may look different than for rest of system.
- Cron directory can have "immutable" flag set, see "lsattr" command.
- I assume you check free space on device, but did you check free inodes ("df -i")?

Hello All ,
recreating the path /var/spool/cron/cron.ZpnPN4 , Has cleared the problem .

I am now going to do a reboot & see if crond(dcron) will indeed create another unique data path for root (& my users) cron scripts .

Thank you , Both Labinnah & MensaWater for your Questions & Hints .

I may be back ...

Status of thread is Solved & report success after reboot .

reboot and dcron created another path for root .
But now I have iptables not reloading the saved tables . Off to it again .

Thank you .

1 members found this post helpful.

Not sure how you updated iptables - was it an official Slackware update or was it from source?

Is the network interface up before iptables is loaded? Do you have any virtual (tun/tap) interfaces -- for a VPN, perhaps? they would need to be brought up before iptables.