cron - query

[Sanjiv Sharma_1]

Hi All,

System : N4000/HP-UX 11.00/TZ=SST-8

I have a user "abc" which has the TZ=EST-10EDT. EST-10EDT is 3 hours ahead of SST-8.

abc has a scheduled cronjob at 2:00 am. It is observed that it runs at 2:00am on TZ SST-8 but not TZ EST-10EDT.

Does this mean that the cron for abc doesn't read the profile of abc but it executes the cronjob on the global Timezone "SST-8"?

How do I make the cronjob read the profile of abc and excutes the cronjob at the TZ EST-10EDT?

Thank you,

[Stephen Keane]

> Does this mean that the cron for abc doesn't read the profile of abc but it executes the cronjob on the global Timezone "SST-8"?

It reads the profile for environment variables etc, but runs on the global timezone, otherwise you'd have to have several instances of cron for each timezone users decide to use.

[Sanjiv Sharma_1]

It does read the profile but still execute the cronjob at the global TZ.

I have found the following link in this ITRC forum. Any solution to this issue? My problem seems to be same as mine.
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=9375

[Thayanidhi]

The cron scheduler may be refering to only system time. Not the user time zone. when cron reads profile (TZ=???), I don't it has any effect. Cron cannot read user profiles TZ before it starts a job for that user. It dosn't look logical. You may schedule everything according to system's TZ.

Regds
TT

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

Actually cron does NOT read any user profiles (/etc/profile, ~/.profile, etc.) at all. cron does not work that way. The line specified in the crontab file will merely be invoked as the user whose crontab it is.

cron jobs will run at the appropriate time with the default timezone as specified in /etc/TIMEZONE.