cron stopped working

[Bill Moran]

Matthew Bettinger wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have the following crontab entry for root:
> via crontab -e 
> 
> SHELL=/bin/sh
> PATH=/etc:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin
> HOME=/var/log
> #========================================================
> # Crontab entries to execute flexbackup to dump /depot /general /usr /var
> # on specified days.  Level 0 (full) on Wed @ midnight and Incrementals
> # every other day at midnight -M.Bettinger 9.17.02
> #========================================================
> 55 23 * * 3 root /usr/local/bin/flexbackup -fs all -level 0
> 55 23 * * 4 root /usr/local/bin/flexbackup -fs all -level 1
> 55 23 * * 5 root /usr/local/bin/flexbackup -fs all -level 2
> 55 23 * * 6 root /usr/local/bin/flexbackup -fs all -level 3
> 56 23 * * 0 root /usr/local/bin/flexbackup -fs all -level 4
> 55 23 * * 1 root /usr/local/bin/flexbackup -fs all -level 5
> 55 23 * * 2 root /usr/local/bin/flexbackup -fs all -level 6
> 
> This is sopposed to run  a backup script at night however it appears to not be 
> working, or is it?  In /var/log/cron shows :

Could we see the flexbackup script?  My first guess is that you're relying on
shell variables (such as path) to be set in the flexbackup script, and they're
not, thus the script is failing.
Why not alter the flexbackup script to produce some output that will help you
debug the problem?

> Apr  8 13:08:00 tester /usr/sbin/cron[75516]: (root) CMD (root /usr/local/bin/
> flexbackup -fs all -level 6) 
> 
> If i cut and paste the exact command in sh shell it works.
> 
> System info...
> 
> tester# uname -a
> FreeBSD tester.championelevators.com 4.7-STABLE FreeBSD 4.7-STABLE #0: Thu Dec  
> 5 21:58:26 CST 2002     
> root at tester.championelevators.com:/general/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386
> tester# uptime
> 10:15AM  up 121 days,  1:06, 1 user, load averages: 0.35, 0.09, 0.03
> 
> ps displays that cron is running.
> 
> root     115  0.0  0.4  1028  448  ??  Is    9Dec02   1:48.07 /usr/sbin/cron

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com