Scheduled conjobs do not run

[Indira Aramandla]

Hi,

We scheduled few cron jobs which were beeing executed fine. But since few weeks they do not seem to run. I checked the /var/adm/cron/log file and I can see the job has been scheduled for the correct time.
CMD: "name for the command and path"
> root 20536 c Tue May 25 16:47:00 WST 2004
< root 20536 c Tue May 25 16:47:00 WST 2004 rc=1

But I can the rc=1 and the job does not get executed. I also checked in cron.allow to see the user is included in the file. I checked the queuedefs file and all it has is this
a.4j1n
b.2j2n90w

What should I check for this. Thanks in advance for your help.

Indira A

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

can you look into syslog.log and post the crontab entry for that job?

thanks,

Michael

[Indira Aramandla]

Hi Michael,

I cannot see any reference to the cron job in the syslog.log.
I viewed the /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log and did not find any entry for the cronjob.




Indira A

[Pete Randall]

Indira,

What happened a few weeks ago that may have caused this? Did you apply some patches or something? You didn't mention what release you're running - latest cron patches would be PHCO_26562 for 11i, PHCO_27141 for 11.0. Are these applied?


Pete

[Francesco Campalastri]

Does the script run manually?

Francesco

[Tapas Jha]

Hi Indira,

Check your patch fro cron. Also sometimes cron becomes corrupted.
So, you can backup the cron and then recreate the cron in below manner.
crontab -l > crontab.bak
crontab -r
crontab -e ( here u do like below:
ESC:r crontab.bak)
Check where crontab.bak file is there and give the full path of crontab.bak when u will do r from crontab -e.

Rgds
Tapas

[John Carr_2]

Hi Indira

to find out what is scheduled to run in cron you must use the command

crontab -l

cron picks up its scheduled jobs from memory not from looking at the files on disk, the command crontab -l simply displays the ascii file details not what is loaded into memory to run.

It is possible to manually edit the crontab files and have crontab list them but they do not run because they are not loaded.

To ensure they are loaded issue command

crontab crontab_filename

:-) John.

[john korterman]

Hi,
I think that the return code comes from execution of the script. If you do not redirect the output from the actual execution of the script in crontab, then check the mail to the user in whose crontab the script is executed.

regards,
John K.

[Ralf Seefeldt]

Hello Indira,
I do not know realy much about cron. i have only 1 Question:

Did the cronjob stop running with the change to daylight saving time or a few days later?

You can try stopping and restarting the cron daemon. I guess, that should fix the problem for now.

If you run HP-UX 10.xx, have a look at Patch install PHCO_27422 or some equivalent for your OS-version.

I hope, this helps

Bye
Ralf

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Indira,

I was talking about the entry from crontab -l. Do you redirect the output to a file and is this created/appended to?

hth,

Michael

[Indira Aramandla]

Thanks for all who replied. Here are answers for some of the questions.

Pete,
We are running on HP-UX 11.11 and we have the latest cron patches. I did not apply any pathces recently. There were no major changes, the only change I had done was to turn on the auditing using audsys.

Francesco,
We can run the same job manually.

Tapas,
I had tried what you specified. Does not help.

John,
I had checked the crontab to see if the jobs defined and crontab loaded.

John K,
The retrun code comes from the script, but that retrun code is from cron job I think.

And today I looked at the mail log and it had the following.

â Cron: Your job did not contain a valid audit ID.

Is this due to the auditing by audsys.

Thanks
Indira

[Indira Aramandla]

Hi All,

Figured out something more. The message reporting Cron: Your job did not contain a valid audit ID.
was caused due to the files missing in .cronaids directory. The error message is sent to the server because /usr/spool/cron/.cronaids/root file is missing.

To create the file i did this.

1. Run tsconvert -p
This will build a file /usr/spool/cron/.cronaids with the data
the system needs

2. Then restart cron.
/sbin/init.d/cron stop
/sbin/init.d/cron start

Indira A

[Indira Aramandla]

This thread is closed