Crontab problems with sound-recorder

AnEyeForTexas · 06-08-2006, 10:02 AM

I am using Ubuntu 5.10, with a gnome desktop (Clearview?) Run Level is 2. I want to record the opera every Tuesday night so that I can listen to it later.

If I set up crontab like this:
02 20 * * 2 sound-recorder -c 1 -S 40:00 -f wav opera.wav
it works.

If I set up crontab like this:

02 20 * * 2 sound-recorder -c 1 -S 240:00 -f wav opera.wav
it never starts.

-S 240 minutes is a valid parameter for sound-recorder and works just fine from the command line. Why not from cron?

macemoneta · 06-08-2006, 10:18 AM

Check /var/log/cron for error messages.

AnEyeForTexas · 06-08-2006, 08:04 PM

Hmmm. No such directory on my Ubuntu system. Any other ideas?

macemoneta · 06-08-2006, 09:34 PM

Take a look at /etc/syslog.conf to see where cron messages are routed. For example:

Quote:

cron.* /var/log/cron

This would indicate that the messages are in /var/log/cron. If you see no mention of cron in /etc/syslog.conf, then the cron messages are in the default destination, usually '/var/log/messages'.

AnEyeForTexas · 06-09-2006, 08:57 PM

Well, this process tells me that the log should be
var/log/cron.log.

vaf/log is there, but no cron.log. locate doesn't find it either.

Does that mean that cron thinks everything is okedoke?

macemoneta · 06-09-2006, 09:20 PM

OK, I installed Ubuntu 5.10 to check out what's going on. The cron entry in /etc/syslog.conf is commented out. Remove the '#' at the beginning of the line, and save the file.

Restart sysklogd to pick up the change:

/etc/init.d/sysklogd restart

Restart cron to verify logging has started:

/etc/init.d/cron restart

You should now see entries in /var/log/cron.log. Rerun your test and check for errors.

AnEyeForTexas · 06-11-2006, 11:02 AM

Thank you so much! I enabled the cron.log (that would have been so useful to know about when I started this project), rescheduled it for today and let it run.

Now it works. I just don't get it -- nothing has changed (and I did check and recheck everything before coming to this forum); nevertheless, I'm glad to have the log working so that I can see future mistakes.

Now if I just understood why ...

Thanks again -- I really appreciate your help.

Gary