about crontab job

[juno2]

i write a script to download file " sz -a /tmp/* " , it is Ok to download file to my harddisk ( on Netterm ), but if I make it to the crontab job as " * * * * * sz -a /tmp/* " , then nothing download to my harddisk , can suggest why ? thx

[Umapathy S]

hi,
cron environment is completly different from shell. Make sure you give the whole path of the file and command also (if its not in /usr/bin) in crontab.

HTH,
Umapathy

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi,

First of all where is the command sz ?
/usr/local/bin/sz ???

second use this
* * * * * "/???/sz -a /tmp/*" > /dev/null 2>&1

Hope it helps,

Robert-Jan.

[Massimo Bianchi]

Hi,
in addition to Umaphaty's suggestion, it's best not to use wildcards in crontab, sometimes you can incur into problem.

And i suggest you to change the location of the file source: in HPUX /tmp is used for almost anything, you may download much more than needed.

HTH,
Massimo

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

The most common reason a script works from a shell session but not when 'cron'ed is the sparse environment 'cron' offers. Most notably, 'cron' supplies only the environmental variables HOME (the user's-home-directory), LOGNAME, a PATH consisting of (only) '/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:' and a SHELL variable of '/usr/bin/sh'. This means that your '$HOME/.profile' with any/all of the variables you may define, is *not* offered to the crontas's environment.

One workaround is to source (read) your $HOME/.profile as part of the crontask. A better solutino is to declare *all* the variables you need within your script or within a file that your script sources (reads) as it begins executing.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi

Cron must have all the environmental variables it requires set.

Also in your script give the full path to every command.


When using cron

One to watch out for is:-

WRONG
cd /
rm *

RIGHT
rm //*

If the cd fails then the rm will be done in root dir.


Paula

[twang]

I think you must include full path to the command in the crontab:
* * * * * /usr/bin/sz -a /tmp/*
And I usually create a script to do so, export the search path and related environment variables in the script, like this(.cronprofile export all variables):
. .cronprofile
/usr/bin/sz -a /tmp/*