I have created a cron job under 'su' but it doesn't seem to run. I am not logged in as root, is that the reason the job won't run? Does a user-specific cron job only run if the user is logged on? And does an su-created cron job only run if root is logged on? Thanks.
Fred

Welcome to LQO!

So, you're trying to run a cron job as root?

Give us an example of what you're trying to run.

The biggest gotcha on most cron jobs is how the asterisks appear:

0 3 * * * /usr/bin/yourexamplescript.sh

Just a random example.

Something better might be something like this:

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/06/...ntab-examples/

Hi,

I tried it on my debian box, seems like you can setup root's crontab
and it would run without logging in as root. I suspect user crontab
should also run (the service running crontab runs as root I believe,
and it can change user id...)

~$ sudo crontab -l
no crontab for root

~$ sudo crontab -e
no crontab for root - using an empty one
crontab: installing new crontab

~$ sudo crontab -l
# Edit this file to introduce tasks to be run by cron.
#
# Each task to run has to be defined through a single line
# indicating with different fields when the task will be run
# and what command to run for the task
#
# To define the time you can provide concrete values for
# minute (m), hour (h), day of month (dom), month (mon),
# and day of week (dow) or use '*' in these fields (for 'any').#
# Notice that tasks will be started based on the cron's system
# daemon's notion of time and timezones.
#
# Output of the crontab jobs (including errors) is sent through
# email to the user the crontab file belongs to (unless redirected).
#
# For example, you can run a backup of all your user accounts
# at 5 a.m every week with:
# 0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/
#
# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)
#
# m h dom mon dow command
* * * * * date >> /tmp/root-cron.txt

~$ ls -l /tmp/root-cron.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 29 Dec 22 15:14 /tmp/root-cron.txt

I am trying to run the cron job in Suse Linux 11.3.
I have installed Apache, PostgreSQL and Drupal locally as I teach myself web development (I am a database developer hoping to expand my horizons)
My development site is at localhost and Drupal says to run the following periodically as a cron job:

0 9 * * * /usr/bin/wget -0 - -q -t 1 http://localhost/cron.php

I added the '0 9' since Drupal doesn't specify when to run it. I think this means run the job at 9:00 am every day, when my computer is booted up.

When I log in with su and invoke 'crontab -e' I get the above line.

I have verified that cron.php is at /srv/www....mysite.com/ and I have run cron.php manually so that should work.

Thanks for any insite you can offer.

Fred

1. the cron service should be on by default. Try

ps -ef |grep cron |grep -v grep

2. There are cron.allow & cron.deny files, but usually the default is that anyone can run a cron job.

3. always ensure that all cmds & files accessed in a cron job are specified with the complete access path and are actionable by the cron user ie chk ownerships & perms.

4. as a rule, if cron has a problem it will email either the cron job owner or root. Try the mailx cmd from the cli to see.
See also /var/log/messages

5 see this link http://adminschoice.com/crontab-quic...Crontab%20file