crontab -e updates do not get picked up to run

rps8 · 10-07-2010, 03:09 PM

I have a user that runs crontab -e makes his updates but they never get run. I wrote a simple shell script to echo a string into a file called cron.out and updated the users crontab file as the user. It never gets executed. The scripts have the proper permissions the out file has read write permissions. The script runs fine from the command line but it just does not take using crontab -e. If I start and stop cron as root the changes take effect and the script runs fine. Any ideas?

valen_tino · 10-07-2010, 03:55 PM

As root, please paste the output of

Code:

ls -l /var/spool/cron

rps8 · 10-07-2010, 05:20 PM

here is the output of ls -l /var/spool/cron

-rw------- 1 root root 154 Oct 4 02:23 root
-rw------- 1 siebsrv root 154 Oct 7 13:13 siebsrv

valen_tino · 10-07-2010, 09:31 PM

Hmm...that seems about right if you are installing the cron as siebsrv.
Anything indicative in /var/log/cron or /var/mail/siebsrv ?
Are you using the complete path to the script in cron e.g. /bin/ls versus simply using ls ?

quanta · 10-07-2010, 09:54 PM

1. Check /var/log/cron to make sure the cron was run
2. I suggest you redirect error to a file (more easy to troubleshoot):

Code:

*/30 * * * * /full/path/to/your/script >> /var/log/<your_script>.cron 2>&1

alpha01 · 10-10-2010, 12:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rps8

I have a user that runs crontab -e makes his updates but they never get run. I wrote a simple shell script to echo a string into a file called cron.out and updated the users crontab file as the user. It never gets executed. The scripts have the proper permissions the out file has read write permissions. The script runs fine from the command line but it just does not take using crontab -e. If I start and stop cron as root the changes take effect and the script runs fine. Any ideas?

I had a similar problem using a Debian VPS server. In my case, it turned out that cron needed a carriage return.

Broken:

Code:

[tony@rubyninja ~]$ crontab -l
*/30 * * * * /full/path/to/your/script [tony@rubyninja ~]$

Fixed:

Code:

[tony@rubyninja ~]$ crontab -l
*/30 * * * * /full/path/to/your/script
[tony@rubyninja ~]$

binary_pearl · 10-10-2010, 09:08 PM

The only other thing I can add, is to make sure that your cron entry is more than one minute later than the current time. I have had trouble getting cron entries to run if (at the time of updating the cron), their scheduled time is less than 1 minute than the current time.

--Shaun

abefroman · 10-10-2010, 10:02 PM

Make sure crond is running:

Code:

ps aux |grep crond