VPN Woes
 

Hi.

I have a RPi running Debian on a home network wired directly to my router.

I have set up a number of cron jobs, all of which work as they should do, or they did until I placed a VPN on my router.

Post installing the VPN on my router I have a failing cron task (cd /home/pi && sh wundergroundshell.sh) that pulls a shell file every five minutes which is:

#!/bin/sh
HOST='webcam.wunderground.com'
USER='XXXXXXXXXXX'
PASSWD='XXXXXXXXX'
FILE='image'

cd /home/pi

ftp -p -n -v $HOST <<END_SCRIPT
quote USER $USER
quote PASS $PASSWD
binary
put $FILE
quit
END_SCRIPT
exit

Since I installed the VPN on the router I get the following error in my syslog:

Sep 1 17:42:01 raspberrypi /USR/SBIN/CRON[1952]: (pi) CMD (cd /home/pi && sh wundergroundshell.sh)
Sep 1 17:42:06 raspberrypi postfix/sendmail[1958]: warning: inet_protocols: disabling IPv6 name/address support: Address family not supported by protocol
Sep 1 17:42:06 raspberrypi postfix/postdrop[1961]: warning: inet_protocols: disabling IPv6 name/address support: Address family not supported by protocol
Sep 1 17:42:06 raspberrypi postfix/cleanup[1964]: warning: inet_protocols: disabling IPv6 name/address support: Address family not supported by protocol
Sep 1 17:42:06 raspberrypi postfix/pickup[657]: 7CE30414CF: uid=1000 from=<pi>
Sep 1 17:42:06 raspberrypi postfix/trivial-rewrite[1967]: warning: inet_protocols: disabling IPv6 name/address support: Address family not supported by protocol
Sep 1 17:42:06 raspberrypi postfix/cleanup[1964]: 7CE30414CF: message-id=<20170901164206.7CE30414CF@raspberrypi>
Sep 1 17:42:06 raspberrypi postfix/qmgr[2807]: 7CE30414CF: from=<pi@raspberrypi>, size=1441, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Sep 1 17:42:06 raspberrypi postfix/local[1970]: warning: inet_protocols: disabling IPv6 name/address support: Address family not supported by protocol
Sep 1 17:42:06 raspberrypi postfix/local[1970]: warning: database /etc/aliases.db is older than source file /etc/aliases
Sep 1 17:42:06 raspberrypi postfix/local[1970]: 7CE30414CF: to=<pi@raspberrypi>, orig_to=<pi>, relay=local, delay=0.15, delays=0.1/0.03/0/0.01, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (delivered to mailbox)
Sep 1 17:42:06 raspberrypi postfix/qmgr[2807]: 7CE30414CF: removed

The task does not complete.

However, if I execute the shell file (wundergroundshell.sh) directly from a command line, it works!

To make the shell file executable I used chmod 755.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Regards

Dave

If the postfix/sendmail errors are due to cron being unable to send mail because of the vpn you can add MAILTO="" to the cronjob and or redirect the output of the script to a file. The file will also show if there are any script errors caused by running it from cron.