cron error

[Elif Gius]

It has been my impression for some time now that any scripts written to
be CRONned has to be sh shell scripts, like so;

#!/bin/sh

If the script is based on a shell other than sh, e.g. C shell or Korn
shell, then the appropriate CRON entry should be

* * * * * /usr/bin/ksh
or

* * * * * /usr/bin/csh
and not simply

* * * * *
This is because the CRON daemon simply shells the scripts using sh and does not actually fork a seperate shell script process to run the script.

Because I get an error like "sh: ~/spot/startmap.log: cannot create
"

Am I wrong?

[MarkSyder]

I've never heard that. I've got several examples of

* * * * *
which work fine.

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Elif,

Remember that when something runs from cron, the environment is very sparse. There is little, or no, PATH environment which is the usual cause of problems.

~/spot/startmap.log:

use the full PATH to the log file, cron does not know what user this is, or set the PATH variables in the beginning of your cron script.

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[Mancboy]

Hi Elif,
cron runs in a basic environment with very little defined.
I always recommend my users run their scripts in a test environment, that has /bin/sh as the shell and litte in the .profile (just as cron will execute the commands).

If you need any environment variables other than the basics ($HOME etc), then run a "setenv" style script that sets up the PATH, ORACLE_SID etc variables.

Also, *ALWAYS* give the full path for all commands in scripts, don't assume that programs such as echo, tar etc will be the correct echos and tars.

I had a user who (when they typed echo) used /usr/bin/echo in their interactive shell, but when they ran their script from cron, it came up with the shell built-in.
And similarly when somebody had several versions of tar in different areas(/opt/bin/tar, /bin/tar). Then gnu tar was added to /usr/local/bin/tar - all of a sudden, the script that called "tar" failed to behave as expected, as /usr/local/bin was first in the PATH.

[spex]

Elif,

Sorry if I'm stating the obvious, but check that '~/spot/startmap.log' is what you want, and not '~spot/startmap.log'.

As others have said, check that your environmental variables are set up properly. If you're looking to test variables from cron, create a script that echos the variables in question, and read the output. For a more generic approach, you could put environmental variables in a file, and source that file from scripts you run as cron or other users.

PCS