We are a school & have built scripts to create users on our student server, & these work fine when run from the command line.

However we have tried several ways to get them to run from the root crontab with no luck. The sticking point seems to be useradd; if I put a simple "useradd testuser" in crontab nothing happens, and if I put the useradd command in a script & run the script using crontab the result is the same.

Any pointers as to why this command won't work from crontab & how to get it working?

Thanks much.


Adrian Hicks

Hi Adrian,
The environment which runs under cron is not the same as your session. You have to specify the absolute path of useradd: "/usr/sbin/useradd".
Best regards.

Thanks Osvaldo (hope I got your name right). I've tried that before & had no luck, but have just had success on Debian Sarge where Woody on the student server won't do it.

Will upgrade the student machine to Sarge & go from there.

Adrian Hicks

Hi Adrian,
Normally things on the crontab are tested so, all the output of it is redirected to /dev/null. You can debug it by redirecting it to a file; for exampleAll the messages will be appended to this file in the /tmp directory. As you say you already tried "/usr/sbin" in Woody, it is probable it is in another directory. You can determine the real path with "which useradd" or, in the worst of the hypothesis, "find / -mount -name useradd".
By the way, you got it right.

Osvaldo.