Backup script won't run in cron job. Why?

macemoneta · 11-21-2006, 10:27 AM

The naming restriction isn't noted in my (Fedora) documentation. However, Ubuntu probably pulls the Debian vixie-cron, and Fedora is probabaly using the Redhat patch set. Vixie-cron hasn't been maintained since 1993, so each distribution's patch set can diverge quite a bit. See this discussion.

matthewg42 · 11-21-2006, 10:34 AM

I think Ubuntu uses anacron.

vegas35 · 10-30-2007, 09:37 PM

I had a cron job that worked on Fedora, but not SuSE. Same issue, as far as being able to run it interactively, but from cron there was no output. Turns out the TERM env var wasn't set for some reason when it ran from cron.

macemoneta · 10-30-2007, 10:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vegas35

I had a cron job that worked on Fedora, but not SuSE. Same issue, as far as being able to run it interactively, but from cron there was no output. Turns out the TERM env var wasn't set for some reason when it ran from cron.

Could it be because there is no terminal when running a cron job?

vegas35 · 10-31-2007, 08:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by macemoneta

Could it be because there is no terminal when running a cron job?

My point is that I didn't have that problem on my Fedora servers, only on the SuSE box. I added a "TERM=xterm" to the top of my SuSE's crontab, and it fixed the problem. I didn't have to add that line on the Fedora servers' crontabs.