Cannot append data to that file

[Ian Derringer]

Greetings,
I am getting this e-mail from root with a subject line 'Cron /usr/lib/sa/sa1 1 1 Cannot append data to that file' - Every 10 minutes. What does this mean and how do I fix this? I checked the permission of sa1 and it belongs to root with plenty of permissions.

Please help.

Thank you in advance.
Ian

[Ermin Borovac]

It sounds like this is a linux system. Cron email is coming from /etc/cron.d/sysstat cron job, which executes sar performance data collection script (sa1) every ten minutes.

*/10 * * * * root /usr/lib/sa/sa1 1 1

The script tries to create a file in /var/log/sa directory.

Please run the script manually and post the output.

# sh -x /usr/lib/sa/sa1 1 1

[Gopi Sekar]

i believe sa1 is part of sar utility for taking system statistics. from the error message what you are getting, the reason could be that hard disk is full and data can not be appended on to the log file.

or there is maximum file size set and the log file is trying to grow beyond that.

the log files are most probably at /var/log/sa

Hope this helps,
Gopi

[Ian Derringer]

Hi,
This is the error message when I tried to execute the command you've recommended,
bash: Cannot: command not found

I also noticed that my cron jobs are off schedule but it's running though.

Any ideas?

Thanks!!

Ian

[Kent Ostby]

Ian --

Check your crontab and whatever command is in there to run every 10 minutes you should execute doing:

sh -x

This will give you details to where it's failing.

Best regards,

Kent M. Ostby

[Gopi Sekar]

most likely either /usr/lib/sa/sa1 is missing in your system (either removed or corrupted) or one of the application which sa1 is using is missing from the system.

was this job working earlier without any problems?

Regards,
Gopi

[Ian Derringer]

There's a script called sysstat located in /etc/cron.d to execute every 10 minutes. I have no clue on who had put this script in there. I went in and comment it out for now, so it won't try to run every 10 minutes.

Is this something was setup by the system by default? If so, how do I set this up to run correctly?

Thanks,
Ian

[Senthil Kumar .A_1]

Hi Ian,

I happened to find the same kind of issues faced by many on the net.

Please check this link..
and see whether it applies to you aswell..

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=64994


bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=64994

Please chack the 3rd comment in the above url..

Regards.