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Re: How to start and verify cron?
On 2019-07-11 15:20, David Karr wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 12:56 PM David Karr wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 4:04 PM Brian Inglis wrote:
> On 2019-07-10 16:15, David Karr wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 10:20 AM Brian Inglis wrote:
> > On 2019-07-10 10:55, David Karr wrote:
> > > I've checked the user guide and the FAQ, and I can't find any
> information
> > > about how to start cron and verify that it's working. I found
> other blog
> > > posts on other sites, but some of them are old.
> >
> > Did you run service setup script /bin/cron-config to set up the
> service?
> > When I ran that now, it says "Cron is already installed as a service under
> > account ...", so I assume that means that I did.
> > > I had installed cron, and I thought it was working, but now I
> think that it
> > > is not. If I edit "~/crontab" and then run "crontab -l", it
> lists the
> > > changes I've made to jobs, so at least that is working. The
> real job I
> > > have didn't appear to be doing what it was supposed to be doing,
> so I added
> > > a new trivial job that just appends output from "date" to a file
> in my
> > > homedir, and after the scheduled time of the job, the file was
> not created.
> >
> > Messages from cron and other active services should be visible in
> the Windows
> > application event log if you have not set up a syslog service.
> > I went through it, but I didn't see any indications of issues with
> cron. I'm
> > not sure what to look for, or where in the event log interface.
> > > This is the additional job I added:
> > >
> > > 40,42,44 * * * * date >> /home/<myuid>/date.txt
> > >
> > > I did find a "/var/log/cron.log", but it is empty, and the
> modtime is from
> > > a few months ago.
> > >
> > > One blog post I found talks about running "cygrunsrv -I cron -p
> > > /usr/sbin/cron -a -D". I just did this, and it reports "The
> specified
> > > service already exists."
> > >
> > > This is my uname -a output:
> > >
> > > CYGWIN_NT-6.1 ... 3.0.3(0.338/5/3) 2019-03-09 19:12 x86_64 Cygwi
> > For a more Unix like and self contained Cygwin approach, install
> syslog-ng, run
> > service setup scripts /bin/cygserver-config /bin/syslog-ng-config
> > /bin/cron-config, add service dependencies to start up in that
> order, and you
> > should see cron messages in /var/log/syslog if you run elevated:
> you can also
> > run chmod elevated to make /var/log/syslog world readable, or
> setfacl to add
> > user or group read ACLs.
> > How do I add service dependencies to start up in a particular order?
> In an elevated cmd or bash shell:
> elevated > OR # sc config syslog-ng depend= cygserver
> elevated > OR # sc config cron depend= syslog-ng/cygserver
> N.B. the "=" is part of each keyword; multiple service dependencies are
> separated by "/".
> It's curious that when I bring up the default "Packages" view, filtering for
> "syslog-ng" doesn't find anything. I had to switch to the Categories view,
> and then filtering for that found it.
> After doing all of this, I still can't get cron jobs to work, and I can't get
> any info on why.
> This is the current output from "crontab -l":
> 0 0,12 * * * find /tmp/.logcache/ -type f -mtime +6
> -exec rm {} \;
> 14,15,16,17 * * * * date >> /home/dk068x/date.txt
> I've tried editing that last one and changing the minutes to include upcoming
> minutes, and then after those minutes, I check the results, and there are none.
> Nothing in cron.log or syslog-ng.log.
Did you run the <service>-config scripts to setup the services?
Did you restart all services after any changes?
# for srv in cygserver syslog-ng cron; do \
for o in -Q -E -Q -S -Q; do \
cygrunsrv $o $srv; done; done
Check /dev/log:
# ls -lF --color /dev/log
srw-rw-rw- 1 SYSTEM SYSTEM 0 Jul 10 12:28 /dev/log=
if you don't see a pink /dev/log with "=" flag, and it's just black with no "="
flag, rm /dev/log and restart syslog-ng as above.
Do not forget to *ALWAYS* shut down all Cygwin services before running setup to
upgrade any Cygwin packages.
You can check the status of all services with a command such as
$ cygrunsrv -VL | sed -Ee '/^Service\s*:\s*/{s//
/;s/\s+$//;s/\s*(\S+)\s+\(Installation\spath\s*:\s*.*\)$/
(\1)/;H;};/^Current\sState\s*:\s*/{s// /;s/\s*$/ /;H;};$!d;${x;s/\n|\s+$|^\s+//g;}'
cron Running cygserver Running syslog-ng Running
--
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
This email may be disturbing to some readers as it contains
too much technical detail. Reader discretion is advised.
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