topic crontab in Operating System - HP-UX

crontab

xiandao — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 04:22:32 GMT

Do anyone know if the crontab can only start a foreground job?
What I mean is that I have a shell script which has one foreground job and one background job.
It works well if I start it from the command line.
But the background job doesn't work if it is started by crontab.
Do anyone have any ideas?

Please reply me asap. Thanks.

Re: crontab

Steve Steel — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 04:24:53 GMT

Hi

Cron has another environment than the command line

You probably need to give full names for all commands and export all values

If it runs as a specific setup then add

. /home/user/.profile

To the script to run the profile in the same processing level

Steve Steel

Re: crontab

Jose Mosquera — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 04:34:08 GMT

Hi,

Pls do not forget *always* start your script with the desired shell, i.e:
#!/sbin/sh
your_procedure_line1
your_procedure_line2
etc...

Also do not forget uses the full path assignment for each command. To locate a full command path use:
#whence

Rgds.

Re: crontab

Petr Simik_1 — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 04:41:29 GMT

there are only "background" jobs started in crontab there is no reason to put & after the command they all are started as "background". You have to specify full path to start processes.
You have to specify PATH. include .profile is the easiest way to do that.
And is good to specify output of scripts if it exists. Otherwise the output is directed to mail of user(owner).

Re: crontab

Jan Sladky — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 04:48:46 GMT

hi,
in my opinion it is not needed to run jobs on background via cron.
Normally it is used only if you have only one tty and want to have access on the tty and run some jobs simultaneously.

I suggest only redirect STDOUT & STDERR into logfile

23 59 * * * /job.sh > /tmp/job.log 2>&1

hope tih will help you

br Jan

Re: crontab

Michael Tully — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 04:53:53 GMT

cron does not run foreground jobs, only jobs in the background. You'll have to provide part of your script for us to help.