[SOLVED] Cron job not running as root?

littlebigman · 06-21-2015, 07:29 AM

Hello

The following script runs fine when ran manually (as root), but it fails writing a file into /usr/share/nginx/acme/stuff/.

Here's the script:

Code:

/etc/cron.hourly# cat download_bash
#!/bin/bash

SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
OUTPUT=/usr/share/nginx/acme/stuff/index.html

#This file is successfully created
echo "cron job running at `date`" > /tmp/testcron

NOW=$(date +"%A %d-%m-%Y %T")
echo "$NOW" > $OUTPUT

#No trace of this file in $OUTPUT :-/
wget -i list.txt -qO - | grep -Pzo 'some.pattern' >> $OUTPUT

sed -i 's@/local@http://www.google.com/local@g' $OUTPUT

Here's the destination directory:

Code:

# ll /usr/share/nginx/acme/stuff/
drwxr-xr-x 2 nobody nogroup   4096 Jun 21 14:20 ./
drwxr-xr-x 7 nobody root      4096 May 14 02:08 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root    106640 Jun 21 14:20 index.html

And here's Debian's crontab file:

Code:

# cat /etc/crontab

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

# m h dom mon dow user  command
17 *    * * *   root    cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
25 6    * * *   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily )
47 6    * * 7   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly )
52 6    1 * *   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly )

Could it be that cron/run-parts doesn't run scripts as root, although that's what it says in /etc/crontab? No information is provided in /var/log/messages.

Thanks for any help.

jailbait · 06-21-2015, 12:26 PM

The script might not be able to find the file list.txt when running in cron. Try giving the full path name for list.txt.

---------------------------------
Steve Stites

littlebigman · 06-21-2015, 02:20 PM

Bingo!

Moral of the story: Make sure all files can be found, either through the PATH line or absolute paths.

Thank you.