Re: debugging cronjobs not running

On Sun, Nov 09, 2008 at 06:57:10AM -0500, Michael P. Soulier wrote:
So, I'm running cron in debug mode, and I do see things like this
about my crontab.

I'm not sure why you sent this to me directly, but I do appreciate you
CC'ing the mailing lists. :-)

load_entry()...returning successfully
load_env, read <*/5 * * * * cacti /usr/local/bin/php
/usr/local/share/cacti/poller.php 1>/dev/null 2>&1>
load_env, parse error, state = 7

but that parse_error line is the same for many links that do seem to
be run properly.

I have no familiarity with the internals of cron, so I have no idea what
"parse error" implies, nor "state = 7".

The symptoms I'm seeing is some cronjobs, specifically weekly ones,
not running as expected. Plus, I used to get email from the nightly
runs of periodic, and now I don't see anything. I know some jobs
aren't running because they produce files as output and I'm not seeing
them. That, or they're simply running unsuccessfully.

One thing I noticed is that "man 5 crontab" seems to make no mention
of the "user" field used in /etc/crontab, but that's likely just a
documentation error.

That's because /etc/crontab is not crontab(5). See cron(8) for mentions
of the "system-level crontab". Please file a PR on the documentation
confusion so it can get fixed/addressed.

Has anyone ever configured cronjobs that just didn't run, or you
didn't get mail for them like you should have?

No, this has never happened to me, or on any of the systems I've
administrated.

It might be worthwhile using "crontab -e -u <user>" and see if those
crontabs reliably work for you. If so, then the problem is likely with
the system-level crontab and not with user-level crontabs.

Before doing this, be sure to note what security/pam checks get applied
to user-level crontabs vs. system-level crontabs. This is documented in
cron(8). You might have to change shells of some accounts on your
system to get user-level crontabs to work for those accounts.

--
| Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |

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