Cron question

Cron question

[Jayson Smith]

Hi,
I have recently installed Gentoo, and before that I was using Debian.  I
don't know which Cron daemon comes standard with Debian but in Gentoo I
chose VixiCron.  Aparently, Debian's Cron daemon fired off at about 6:25
A.M. local time for daily events.  Aparently, Gentoo's fires at about 3:00
A.M. local time.  My question is this.  What determines at what time of day
Cron will fire?
Jayson.

Re: Cron question

[Joseph C. Lininger]

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Every user in Linux has a crontab file where he or she can schedule events 
to run when ever he or she chooses. The times are configurable. See the 
crontab man page for more information. Most likely, what you are seeing is 
the nightly events configured to run as root.
- ---
Joseph C. Lininger
jbahm@pcdesk.net
note, the following is used for automated processing. Please leave in tact 
if quoting me in a reply.
Verification: 5eab38a77ac40416e075be8f50607ff7
- ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jayson Smith" <ratguy@bellsouth.net>
To: "Speakup" <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 5:14 PM
Subject: Cron question


> Hi,
> I have recently installed Gentoo, and before that I was using Debian.  I
> don't know which Cron daemon comes standard with Debian but in Gentoo I
> chose VixiCron.  Aparently, Debian's Cron daemon fired off at about 6:25
> A.M. local time for daily events.  Aparently, Gentoo's fires at about 3:00
> A.M. local time.  My question is this.  What determines at what time of 
> day
> Cron will fire?
> Jayson.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
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Re: Cron question

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

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Read all about it with "man crontab". If you do "crontab -e" as
root, you will be editing a text file containing the scheduling
instructions for cron. On Slackware systems at least, this file
is well documented with comment statements and examples.

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004, Jayson Smith wrote:

> Hi,
> I have recently installed Gentoo, and before that I was using Debian.  I
> don't know which Cron daemon comes standard with Debian but in Gentoo I
> chose VixiCron.  Aparently, Debian's Cron daemon fired off at about 6:25
> A.M. local time for daily events.  Aparently, Gentoo's fires at about 3:00
> A.M. local time.  My question is this.  What determines at what time of day
> Cron will fire?
> Jayson.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

- -- 
The Moon is Waning Crescent (1% of Full)
My home page is now at http://www.mhcable.com/~chuckh
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Re: Cron question

[Gregory Nowak]

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Most likely the crontab man page is what you're looking for.

Greg


On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 07:14:50PM -0400, Jayson Smith wrote:
> Hi,
> I have recently installed Gentoo, and before that I was using Debian.  I
> don't know which Cron daemon comes standard with Debian but in Gentoo I
> chose VixiCron.  Aparently, Debian's Cron daemon fired off at about 6:25
> A.M. local time for daily events.  Aparently, Gentoo's fires at about 3:00
> A.M. local time.  My question is this.  What determines at what time of day
> Cron will fire?
> Jayson.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 
> !DSPAM:40d0db726484522632864!
> 
> 

- -- 
Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org

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Re: Cron question

[Alex Snow]

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If you're talking about the scripts in /etc/cron.daily on my slackware 
system that's controled by a line in root's crontab. do crontab -e as 
root to edit it.
On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 07:14:50PM -0400, Jayson Smith 
wrote:
> Hi,
> I have recently installed Gentoo, and before that I was using Debian.  I
> don't know which Cron daemon comes standard with Debian but in Gentoo I
> chose VixiCron.  Aparently, Debian's Cron daemon fired off at about 6:25
> A.M. local time for daily events.  Aparently, Gentoo's fires at about 3:00
> A.M. local time.  My question is this.  What determines at what time of day
> Cron will fire?
> Jayson.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

- -- 
Note that if I can get you to "su and say" something just by asking,
you have a very serious security problem on your system and you should
look into it.
	-- Paul Vixie, vixie-cron 3.0.1 installation notes
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Re: Cron question

[Thomas Stivers]

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On Jun 16 2004  7:14 PM, Jayson Smith wrote:
> Hi,
> I have recently installed Gentoo, and before that I was using Debian.  I
> don't know which Cron daemon comes standard with Debian but in Gentoo I
> chose VixiCron.  Aparently, Debian's Cron daemon fired off at about 6:25
> A.M. local time for daily events.  Aparently, Gentoo's fires at about 3:00
> A.M. local time.  My question is this.  What determines at what time of day
> Cron will fire?

At least on my Debian system, don't know about gentu, the cron.{daily
hourly monthly weekly} scripts are run from /etc/crontab. This file has
an extra field where a user name may be put as the user to run as. At
least here root's crontab is empty. The entries you're looking for
should be in one of these places.

HTH

- -- 
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan

Thomas Stivers	e-mail: stivers_t@tomass.dyndns.org
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Re: cron question

[Scott Howell]

Well I stand corrected, I was able to get fetchmail working as a 
system-wide daemon after all.
Not sure what I did differently, but its picking up mail for all account 
which it previously would not do. Lucky me.


>Greg,
>
>Well actually I have not been able to completely get fetchmail working 
>as a system-wide daemon sufficiently so I resorted to calling it in a 
>cron job which to be honest saves memory. Seems little point to run 

Re: cron question

[groleau+wes]

On 4 Sep 2004, at 21:17, Gregory Nowak wrote:

> To get rid of the mails from cron, put
>
>> /dev/null 2>&1
>
> at the end of the line in your crontab that runs fetchmail. Hth.

OR, put

    MAILTO=""

before that line

-- 
Wes Groleau

   A bureaucrat is someone who cuts red tape lengthwise.

Re: cron question

[Adam Myrow]

Fetchmail has a "-s" option for silent that you may want to use if running 
it from a cron.  According to the man page, it suppresses normal output, 
but not error messages.

As for me, I tend to call fetchmail after I've logged in and leave it 
running as a daemon.  I have a line in my .bash_logout file which kills 
off any running fetchmail.  The only problem is, if I am logged in on more 
than one console, a logout on any of them kills fetchmail.  I haven't 
bothered to figure this out yet, although I figure it can't be too hard. 
I've never even attempted to set up a system-wide fetchmail because I 
don't want my mail being pulled when I'm not near my computer.

Re: cron question

[Scott Howell]

Greg,

Well actually I have not been able to completely get fetchmail working 
as a system-wide daemon sufficiently so I resorted to calling it in a 
cron job which to be honest saves memory. Seems little point to run 
multiple copies of fetchmail or even run a daemon if you can accomplish 
the same task in a cron job. Maybe I am looking at this a waste of time, 
but maybe from an efficiency use in terms of memory, it will do.
Actually I knew that >/dev/null 2>&1 was to simple and thus is why I 
forgot it.

tnx

Scott

Re: cron question

[Thomas Stivers]

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On Sat, Sep 04 2004 at 10:11:09PM -0400, Scott Howell wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> I've setup a cron job for my wife that polls for her mail. The problem 
> is that cron sends her a message everytime fetchmail is run. I have a 
> similar setup, but I don't get these messages unless something is wrong 
> with my setup, but doesn't appear to be the case. She is getting mail, 
> but just tuns of these messages from Cron.
> I know there is a way to stop these messages bening sent to her, but I 
> can't think of what that is. Has anyone a suggestion?

One suggestion is to redirect the stdout and stderr of your call to
fetchmail in the crontab to /dev/null. Something like

fetchmail 2>&1 >/dev/null

would do the trick.

Another IMHO better suggestion is to have fetchmail run as a daemon
polling for mail at regular intervals. You can set up a /etc/fetchmailrc
to get any mail you need and put it in any user's mailbox. I think that
the Debian version of fetchmail automatically starts as a daemon when
you have a /etc/fetchmailrc. This automatic starting only takes place at
boot time however so you would need to run "/etc/init.d/fetchmail start"
and you should be set. The fetchmail man page has all the details on
fetchmailrc files and they are pretty easy to set up.

HTH

- -- 
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan

Thomas Stivers	e-mail: stivers_t@tomass.dyndns.org
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Re: cron question

[Gregory Nowak]

Actually, since you probably still want to see any error messages that
fetchmail produces, just put

>/dev/null

at the end.

Greg


On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 09:17:16PM -0500, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> Scott,
> 
> why are you using cron to run fetchmail, and not just putting
> fetchmail into daemon mode? 
> 
> To get rid of the mails from cron, put
> 
> >/dev/null 2>&1
> 
> at the end of the line in your crontab that runs fetchmail. Hth.
> 
> Greg
> 
> 

-- 
Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org

Re: cron question

[Gregory Nowak]

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Scott,

why are you using cron to run fetchmail, and not just putting
fetchmail into daemon mode? 

To get rid of the mails from cron, put

>/dev/null 2>&1

at the end of the line in your crontab that runs fetchmail. Hth.

Greg


On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 10:11:09PM -0400, Scott Howell wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> I've setup a cron job for my wife that polls for her mail. The problem 
> is that cron sends her a message everytime fetchmail is run. I have a 
> similar setup, but I don't get these messages unless something is wrong 
> with my setup, but doesn't appear to be the case. She is getting mail, 
> but just tuns of these messages from Cron.
> I know there is a way to stop these messages bening sent to her, but I 
> can't think of what that is. Has anyone a suggestion?
> 
> tia,
> Scott
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 
> !DSPAM:413a75ef194867916237416!
> 
> 

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cron question

[Scott Howell]

Folks,

I've setup a cron job for my wife that polls for her mail. The problem 
is that cron sends her a message everytime fetchmail is run. I have a 
similar setup, but I don't get these messages unless something is wrong 
with my setup, but doesn't appear to be the case. She is getting mail, 
but just tuns of these messages from Cron.
I know there is a way to stop these messages bening sent to her, but I 
can't think of what that is. Has anyone a suggestion?

tia,
Scott

Re: cron question

[Christopher Moore]

Scott,
I forgot to mention that you can find out alot about how things go
together by poking around in the /var/adm/packages directory.  Each
installed slakware package creates a file containing a listing of the
files installed with that package.  So, for example, if you wanted to find
where the cron files come from you could do:
grep cron *


73, Chris w1gm@sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System -
http://sdf.lonestar.org

Re: cron question

[scott howell]

tnx Chris for the info.

Re: cron question

[dana yeomans]

Does redhat do the same thing? If so, have a lot to learn.
http://www.randomc.com/~dana
reply: dana@randomc.com

Net-Tamer V 1.12 Beta - Test Drive

Re: cron question

[Scott Howell]

tnx Chris. Actually for some reason I dont' have a makedev script, but going
to go look for one. I am sure one exists that should work.

tnx again for the info/help.

73 de Scott/n3byy

cron question

[Scott Howell]

Just a quick question. I noticed that my Linux box used to run a cron job
about 4:30 in the morning to flush the file system. I can't say what, why,
or when the line containing that info got deleted or even if it did. Why I
don't know is because it hasnt' run,b ut then I dont' know the line either
so assume this is the problem.
I am running Slackware 7. Does anyone know this line that I am refering too?
If so, could you please send it to me? I see the line that flushes pop mail
every 15 mins, but well in any case I can't find this other line.
I did make a backup of the root cron file, but apparently cron makes a back
as well cause the root.bak file I had made looked exactly like the current
root file which leads me to believe cron had the same file name in mind as I
did.<G>

Oh, one other question.
I can't get my floppy to mount, but it had worked in the past. I havent'
changed anything lately and this is really frustrating me to no end.

I am mounting /dev/fd0 in the following way. Also note the floppy is good
cause I tested it on a windows box to be sure.

mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt

now I get the famous error msg of

/dev/fd0 is not a valid block device

Of course this seems to be the favored error msg on my Linux box here of
late.

tnx

Scott



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Re: cron question

[Christopher Moore]

Scott,
Don't know about your cron job, but looks lik'll need to rebuild your
/dev/fd0 device file.  I believe there is a MAKEDEV script you can use.
Also, you can mount the floppy as -t vfat which will allow you to look at
long filenames.


73, Chris w1gm@sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org