Can't make cron work

[powdarrmonkey]

I made a jump to Debian from Slackware a few weeks ago. The only weird thing I haven't been able to fix is cron: it's running, and I have entries in my crontab to pick up some mailboxen, but they don't happen *ever*.

 

I've checked that:

• Cron is running
  
• I can run the commands fine from a shell myself
  
• I don't have an /etc/cron.allow or cron.deny file.
  
• Things in the daily list do take place (like update notifications)
  
• All my command use full paths
  

 

Can anyone shed any light? I haven't yet found a useful combination of google terms..

[kesomir]

are you editing using crontab -e ?

 

(crontab -l to list)

 

I appreciate that as a slackware user, your *nix skills are probably beyond mine, but I have no trouble with crontab on debian as root.

[powdarrmonkey]

are you editing using crontab -e ?

 

(crontab -l to list)

 

Yes, and it claims to install it properly, just that nothing ever happens.

 

I appreciate that as a slackware user, your *nix skills are probably beyond mine, but I have no trouble with crontab on debian as root.

 

This is a normal user of course, but I don't see why it should be any different.

 

Weird.

[kmount]

Seeing crontab -l would be useful..

[powdarrmonkey]

Yes, I was just posting it and realised what I'd done.. I redirect stdout to /dev/null, and typo'd. Rather than mailing me telling me I'd errored, it just dropped the job.

 

Works now Thanks guys

[kmount]

For anyone else who comes across this thread with issues cron related, I'd urge them NOT to redirect the output to /dev/null until they are certain the job is working as the annoying emails in this case would have revealed the issue.

 

Glad its working

[powdarrmonkey]

And I'd urge you not to copy your old crontab like-for-like assuming the commands still work... prove them with the annoying emails first, then redirect Don't depend on stderr!

[clodhopper]

Install Webmin (Webmin), makes things like cron really easy to work with :-)

[powdarrmonkey]

I'm not a great fan of webmin (purely personal choice), but this is also my workstation