Why Does One Cron Job Runs Twice?

cpope67 · 11-10-2004, 02:10 PM

I have a file that tests email setup in /etc/cron/hourly and it runs every hour. It still runs every hour but now it runs twice on the hour one second apart. Now I get two emails every hour. Why has it started doing this? It still works and this is one of those little bothersome things that just eat at you because you can't figure out what is going on. Anybody got an idea why it's doing this?

Matir · 11-10-2004, 02:24 PM

No symlinks to itself, or calling of itself, right? And it didn't get added to an extra crontab, did it?

cpope67 · 11-15-2004, 10:40 AM

No symlinks to itself, or call itself, I only have one crontab. This is all that it is doing:

echo "THIS IS A TEST EMAIL."|mail cpope@mwwssb.com -s"POSTAL `date`"
echo " " >> /root/logs/test.log
echo "POSTAL `date`" >> /root/logs/test.log
echo "EMAIL IS UP. HAVE A NICE DAY

">> /root/logs/test.log
echo " " >> /root/logs/test.log

arvind_sv · 11-16-2004, 05:44 AM

Hi,

The first line in the script is sending a mail (to the mwwssb.com address). So, you get one mail.

Then, cron has this feature of mailing you the output of a program executed using crontab. So, run the program on the command-line and see if it outputs anything. If it does, the same output should appear in a mail (second one) to you.

If it does not output anything, post the relevant crontab lines here, and also the whole script being called. Also, post the bodies of the two mails.

Arvind

akilles · 11-16-2004, 06:09 AM

/etc/cron/hourly > /dev/null
This stops sending a mail containing the output of the job.

-Geir