Job in /etc/cron.d not working

BrianK · 01-29-2009, 10:02 PM

To be clear, I'm not talking about a user's crontab, I'm talking about the system-wide crontab. These are two different things, tho they operate on similar principles (see man 5 crontab in the "EXAMPLE SYSTEM CRON FILE" section)

Regardless, I've added a file to /etc/cron.d. The file looks like so:

Code:

* * * * * root /root/bin/pwcheck_er

The /root/bin/pwcheck_er script, now at least, looks like this:

Code:

#!/bin/tcsh -f

/bin/date >> /tmp/dater

but /tmp/dater never gets updated.

Any ideas why? I'm not really sure how to even track this down.

Thanks

jailbait · 01-29-2009, 10:31 PM

Try changing:

Code:

* * * * * root /root/bin/pwcheck_er

to:

Code:

* * * * *  /root/bin/pwcheck_er

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

anomie · 01-29-2009, 10:34 PM

I've actually never used /etc/cron.d, but according to the cron(8) manpages on my CentOS box:

Quote:

Cron searches /var/spool/cron for crontab files which are named after
accounts in /etc/passwd; crontabs found are loaded into memory. Cron
also searches for /etc/crontab and the files in the /etc/cron.d direc-
tory, which are in a different format (see crontab(5)).

(What distro/version are you asking about, BTW?)

Your crontab entry looks correct -- five date/time items, followed by a user name, followed by a command. Is pwcheck_er executable? Is /bin/tcsh installed on the system? Is the file you added to /etc/cron.d writable only by root? Have you checked root's mail? (stdout and stderr go to the cronjob user's mail by default.) Also, check /var/log/cron (or whatever log crond writes to on your system) for evidence that cronjobs in /etc/cron.d are actually getting run.

BrianK · 01-30-2009, 10:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jailbait

Try changing:

Code:

* * * * * root /root/bin/pwcheck_er

to:

Code:

* * * * *  /root/bin/pwcheck_er

Actually, I tried that. That said, if you have a look at man 5 cron, you'll see that in system cron jobs, you have to include a user name.

Quote:

Originally Posted by anomie

I've actually never used /etc/cron.d, but according to the cron(8) manpages on my CentOS box:

(What distro/version are you asking about, BTW?)

Your crontab entry looks correct -- five date/time items, followed by a user name, followed by a command. Is pwcheck_er executable? Is /bin/tcsh installed on the system? Is the file you added to /etc/cron.d writable only by root? Have you checked root's mail? (stdout and stderr go to the cronjob user's mail by default.) Also, check /var/log/cron (or whatever log crond writes to on your system) for evidence that cronjobs in /etc/cron.d are actually getting run.

Distro: Debian etch (4.0)

Code:

ash:/etc>ls -l /root/bin/pwcheck_er
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 921 Jan 29 19:55 /root/bin/pwcheck_er
ash:/etc>ls -l /tmp/dater
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 29 Jan 29 19:55 /tmp/dater
ash:/etc>ls -l /etc/cron.d/pwcheck_er
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 36 Jan 29 18:14 /etc/cron.d/pwcheck_er

my crons were not logging in syslog, so I turned them on. hopefully I'll get some useful output in a bit. Have a meeting to go to now. Thanks for the tips. I'll try to post back with results of the syslog. In the mean time, if anyone else has any other ideas, my ears are open.

edit: oh, and yes, root's mail gets forwarded to me.

BrianK · 01-30-2009, 01:23 PM

hmm.. so my cron log is empty.

baffled.

BrianK · 01-30-2009, 01:47 PM

Solved. crond had failed somehow. It appeared to be running, but stat'ing it gave garbage. restarted crond & we're happy again. Previously, I'd been "reloading" it rather than restarting it... I never thought that something that appeared to be running might not actually be running.

tiekookeit · 11-03-2011, 09:03 AM

just to say, but sometimes cron.d files fails to load cron jobs on it, just because a empty line at the end of the file is missing, newer versions of cron complains about it