Re: cron and network drives

[Elfyn McBratney <elfyn at cygwin dot com>]

Andrew DeFaria <ADeFaria@Salira.com> wrote:
> Andrew DeFaria wrote:
> 
> >Larry Hall wrote:
> >
> >>Hard to say exactly with the information given.  My WAG is that the 
> >>user from whom you're running the cron job for is logged in and 
> >>authenticated by Windows on the second machine when cron runs but not 
> >>on the first machine.  
> >
> >Only one user is in use on both machines. In fact I accessed both 
> >machines using remote desktop logged in as that user. The crontab is 
> >that same user, etc.
> >
> >>This is assuming the share is not public, which would mean you have a 
> >>completely different (network) problem on the first machine. 
> >
> >Could you please describe exactly what is a "public" share, what is 
> >not a public share (I assume that would be a private share) and how 
> >does one tell the difference? Also, assuming that in the case that 
> >works it works because it's a public share and in the case that 
> >doesn't work it fails because it's a private share then how do I go 
> >about changing the private share to a public share? 
> 
> I really wish that somebody would address this issue once and for all. I 
> often here such things as a "public mount" but to date nobody has 
> ventured a guess as to what a "public mount" would be and how it would 
> differ from a "non public mount". I think I have a situation here that 
> clearly shows that something is odd whereas on one machine a mounted 
> drive is available via cron and on another machine it is not. Both 
> machines are setup nearly identically with the same user (in the same 
> domain though geographically separated by thousands of miles). The only 
> difference I see is that the versions of Cygwin and cron are different.

I think Larry is actually speaking shares here, not mounts.

The reason people might not be explaining this is perhaps because it's just
a case of common sense. Public meaning access-to-all, share, in this case,
meaning a file share ...It really shouldn't need explaining.

FYI, this could have been answered by looking at the Windows help, Microsoft
KB, Google, ...

> The situation is this: There are two machines: hosta and hostb. The user 
> in question is the same, userc. Now on hosta the T drive is mounted from 
> //hosta/share. On hostb the T drive is mounted from //hostb/share (The 
> share is replicated on both machines and has bascially the same stuff - 
> Tools. This is done because of the thousands of miles of seperation 
> between the two machines).
> 
> A cronjob is setup for userc on both hosta and hostb doing merely:
> 
> * * * * * net use > /tmp/netuse
> 
> On hosta it shows the T drive is OK while on hostb it shows the T drive 
> is unavailable.
> 
> hosta and hostb are both Windows 2000 servers. hosta is running Cygwin 
> 1.3.20, cron 3.0.1-7. hostb is running Cygwin 1.3.22, cron 3.0.1-10.

Double check the following

  1) Your /etc/passwd and /etc/group are fully up-to-date (for domain &
     local access)
  2) The cron service is running as the same user

It might also be a good idea to cut Cygwin out of the equastion, and make
sure you're able to do all of this from within Windows (trying your `net use'
from a remote-telnet session would be a good place to start).

There's also a trick you can do with `at' that might help. Type:

  at /interactive HH:MM cmd

at the (Windows) command line. At (no pun intended) HH:MM a LocalSystem owned
command prompt should pop-up, where you can try out `net use'. If it doesn't
work (`net use'), it's a problem with your Windows configuration.

> Can somebody explain why this works on hosta and not on hostb? And if 
> that explaination is "because the share on hosta is public and on hostb 
> it is not" then please let me know what a "public mount" is and how can 
> I make the mount on hostb public.

I wouldn't even want to venture a guess. If you haven't already supplied
cygcheck output from both machines, that would make a good data point.

-- Elfyn

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/