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Re: Cron problem


On Mon, 10 Oct 2005, Orfeo Da Via wrote:

> Hi Igor,
>
> > We can't tell you where you are wrong until you tell us what you mean by
> > cron "not working"...  Does the crontab fail to execute correctly (i.e.,
> > every minute after 10:00?
>
> first I'm sorry for my poor English...

No need to apologize.  Besides, it's not *that* poor... :-)

> in order to explain you what I mean when I wrote "cron does't work",
> I try with the same command in my linux box (debian sid)
>
> $ uname
>  Linux
>
> $ export VISUAL=zile
>
> $ crontab -e
>
>  ...edit the file..

Hmm, one detail that's missing: when was the above done?  Before 8:00, or
after?

> $ crontab -l
>  * 8 * * * /bin/date >> /home/calox/tmp/date.out 2>&1
>
> $ date
>   Mon Oct 10 08:48:36 CEST 2005
>
> $ ls -l  /home/calox/temp
>  total 4
>  -rw-r--r--  1 calox calox 180 Oct 10 08:54 date.out
>
> $ cat tmp/date.out
>
>  Mon Oct 10 08:49:01 CEST 2005
>  Mon Oct 10 08:50:01 CEST 2005
>  Mon Oct 10 08:51:01 CEST 2005
>  Mon Oct 10 08:52:01 CEST 2005
>  Mon Oct 10 08:53:01 CEST 2005
>  Mon Oct 10 08:54:01 CEST 2005
>
> for me, in this example, cron "works", i.e. in ~/tmp directory I found
> the file date.out. In cygwin, with the same crontab, the ~/tmp dir is
> empty.

I see.  Again, did you edit the crontab before 8:00, or after?  If after,
did you wait a day?

> > I think, besides fixing the above typo, reading "man 5 crontab" would be
> > helpful.
>
> Well, I read the man, the README in Paul Vixie source code, and
> cron.README but I didn't find where it's teh problem..

It wasn't obvious that you really meant for cron to run your script every
minute starting at 10:00.  Now it's clear that you understand what the
crontab is doing.

Since you're testing cron, I would suggest starting with

*/5 * * * * /bin/date >> /home/calox/tmp/date.out 2>&1

and waiting 5 minutes.  If /home/calox/tmp is still empty, then we'll
debug further.

A few obvious questions: does /home/calox/tmp exist in Cygwin?  What are
its permissions (do an "ls -ld")?  Are you checking /home/calox/tmp or
~/tmp (IOW, is your $HOME set to /home/calox)?  And, finally, do you have
SHELL set in the Windows environment, and if so, to what value?
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

If there's any real truth it's that the entire multidimensional infinity
of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. /DA

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