cron rc=137

[William Haynes]

cron is reporting a return code of 137
getting same code on both Solaris 2.6 and HP-UX 10.20
but each are executing very different scripts
trying to discover what this code means

have had numerous sysmap ovflo reported on HP-UX but
not aware of any problems on Solaris system

thanks
Bill

[Steffi Jones_1]

The rc= field in cron logs indicates the "return code" or exit value
of a process. For example, if the cron log indicates rc=1, then the process exited with return status 1. There is also a "ts=" which
is for when the process is terminated with a signal. See wait(2) and /usr/include/sys/wait.h for more details on how return status is returned
to the parent process (in this case cron).

Undocumented errors which are returned (especially those which are very
unusual values such as 137) are generally caused by a program not returning
a specific code upon exit, causing random return code. Since Unix does not impose a standard return-code scheme, there is no requirement for a program to have an interesting return code at all.

Steffi Jones

[William Haynes]

though the return code may not be predictable
I need to find out what command/program is
creating it

what do you recommend as a diagnostic means of
discovering what is generating the 137 return
code?

[Steffi Jones_1]

Hi William,

you need to share the information about your crontab file and your cron.log file to see which program was running.

You will most likely ending up with a problem with the application and/or program running at that time rather than a cron problem.

Please provide more info,

Steffi Jones