script runs as standalone but does not work in cron

[Hunki]

Here is the message from the mail. The script is attached.

Your "cron" job on msb-12
(/export/home/it/ARCH )

produced the following output:

stty: : No such device or address
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory
xargs: Could not exec command: No such file or directory

[Torsten.]

Hi,

rule number 1 for scripting:
use full pathnames!

How to get?
Whereis ...

>whereis xargs
xargs: /usr/bin/xargs

[Jeff_Traigle]

gzip is located in /usr/contrib/bin, which is not in the barebones PATH that exists in the cron environment. Either reference the command as /usr/contrib/bin/gzip or define PATH=${PATH}:/usr/contrib/bin at the start of your script.

[Ivan Ferreira]

Use the full path to commans after xargs, for example:

xargs /bin/rm -fr

[A. Clay Stephenson]

The first thing that I would do is get rid of the attempt at sourcing .profile. I know you are doing it to set environment variables but there is a much better way. Your .profile has commands that expect stdin to be a tty device (e.g. a terminal) and you ain't under cron. You thus have to surround all such commands with
if [[ -t 0 ]]
then
stty ...
tabs ...
tset ...
fi
or the equivalent so that .profile works as intended when stdin is not a tty device.

The better way is to create a file (e.g. /usr/local/bin/myenv.sh) and use it to set and export any needed variables and then both your .profile and your cron'ed script should source this file. It's also a good place to set and export additional PATH values so that full path names are not needed.

[hpuxrox]

Scripts run from cron do not have any system wide environment variables; such as PATH. The variables needed must be explicitly defined within your script. However, you can use the absolute path name to each of the executables executed within your cronjob, but I find it easier to echo $PATH from the shell I am testing the script in and include this within the script. ie,

# echo $PATH
/usr/sbin:/usr/ccs/bin

#! /bin/sh
export PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/ccs/bin

[Dennis Handly]

This wasn't mentioned but your redirection of output maybe in the wrong order:
$ find ... 2>&1 > /dev/null

If you want to send both to /dev/null:
$ ... > /dev/null 2>&1

You sent stderr to stdout and tossed stdout.