cron backup job not running
I have just installed CentOS4 on a computer that will run as a SMB server for my dad's chemistry research group. Yesterday, I downloaded a simple backup program, backerupper, that uses cron scheduling to schedule backups at 12:10 AM each day. As I was reading the help file it says that run the setup script, backerupper.start, that moves the program binary to /etc and writes cron scripts to /var/spool/cron/crontabs/cron.update and /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root. Before I ran the setup script, I stopped the crond service and browsed to [b]/var/spool/cron. I found that there was no crontabs folder, thus no cron.update and root files there either. I created the folder crontabs in /var/spool/cron and inside the crontabs folder, I created the two files, cron.update and root. After that I ran the script, backerupper.start, I saw that it wrote 10 0 * * * /usr/local/bin/backerupper 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null sucessfully to the root file and wrote root to the cron.update file. After that, I started the cron service back up, logged off the computer and went to bed. This morning I check to see if the program backed up to /backup and it didn't. Does anyone know what might be wrong?
The backup program is called backerupper it's url is http://www.bluelavalamp.net/backerupper/. Thanks in advance, Derek |
If the /var/spool/cron directory did not already exist, my guess is your version of cron puts configuration files somewhere else. Try just using the 'crontab -e' command to edit your crontab.
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As root, do:
crontab -l This will list your cron entries, make sure the entry is listed. If not, manually edit by doing this as root: crontab -e And add that entry to your crontab, save and exit. No need to stop and restart crond either. |
This is the cron entry that I am trying to make work
Code:
55 17 * * * * /usr/local/bin/backerupper >> /dev/null 2>&1 --Derek |
And that line shows up when you run crontab -l?
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Quote:
Code:
15 13 * * * * /usr/local/bin/backerupper 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null |
If you run the command manually (just run /usr/local/bin/backerupper from the console) does it function as intended? Also, look in your logs in /var/log to see if there are entries logged from the crond.
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When I run the command from the terminal, it works fine.
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Any entries from crond in the logs?
Also, you do intend for this to run at 1:15 PM (13:15), correct? Try adding a cronjob like this: Code:
* * * * * touch /tmp/CRON_IS_RUNNING |
I have checked the logs and there are a bunch of entries for crond that say session opened, session closed for user root. None of these entries though are at the times that I had specified the job to run in crontab.
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