Re: cron won't execute tasks

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

On Thu, 28 Oct 2004, Robert Pollard wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> This problem is driving me insane (I don't have far to go ;-).
> [snip]
> The problem:
> Cron will not execute every minute now.  I have a scheduled task that does
> something like "* * * * * /bin/echo "Test" >/dev/null 1>/TestAct.log"  It
> doesn't execute at all.

Exactly how do you know that it doesn't execute?  I hope not by the lack
of output in /TestAct.log, because the above command will *never* write
anything to /TestAct.log...  It should change the mod time on it, though.
:-)

> [snip]
> Usually, it reports to the system log and I can tell that it is at least
> trying to run every minute.  It's very difficult to know what is
> happening since it doesn't report anything to the system log.  If I run
> it from the command line I can't even see any logging activities at all.
> Looking into /var/log/cron.log only shows when it is started and
> stopped.

Did you check the Windows Event Log?

> BTW, the only way I can get an entry into the system log is to run
> crontab. It tries to reload the crontab entry.  When it was under the
> domain user, I was able to see an entry in the system log every minute.
> Although, it wouldn't execute the scripts because it couldn't switch
> user context.

mkpasswd -d -u DomainUserName >> /etc/passwd

You may also need to do something for groups, e.g.,

mkgroup -d >> /etc/group

(WARNING: the above might take very long if your domain is large and has a
lot of groups).

> Thanks for any help you can give.
> -Robert Pollard

HTH,
	Igor
-- 
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"The Sun will pass between the Earth and the Moon tonight for a total
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