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Re: Restarting cron after crontab update

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On Mon, Dec 09, 2024 at 03:24:06PM +0100, Roger Price wrote:
> On Sun, 8 Dec 2024, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> 
> > What line did you add to /etc/crontab?  Please paste it here.  Note
> > that /etc/crontab uses a different format than personal crontab
> > files (there's an extra username field).
> 
> I added lines to /etc/crontab such as
> 
>  # Watch over the NUT heartbeat at 0803 hr every day
>  3    8    * * *  nut    /usr/local/bin/heartbeat-watcher.sh > /dev/null 2>&1
>  # Lets have Biff bark the hours
>  0,1  0,12 * * *  rprice /mnt/home/rprice/bark/bark.sh  12 > /dev/null 2>&1
>  ...
>  0,1 11,23 * * *  rprice /mnt/home/rprice/bark/bark.sh  11 > /dev/null 2>&1
> 
> > That command edits your personal crontab file, which has the shorter
> > lines (no username field is needed, because all the jobs are run as
> > you).
> 
> I added a username, but crontab -e didn't complain.

I still fear your crontab won't do what you expect it to do.

Most probably cron will just see what you intended as a user
name as part of the command:

  rprice /mnt/home/rprice/bark/bark.sh  11 > /dev/null 2>&1

will run the command "rprice" on the args "/mnt..."; most of
the time this will be a "no such file or so-and-so", sometimes
it might lead to surprising results ;-)

And no, I don't think "crontab -e" will check whether that
command exists. For a multitude of reasons (most of which can
be subsumed under "the environment cron will run in isn't known
when editing the tab").

Cheers
-- 
t

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Restarting cron after crontab update Roger Price <debian@rogerprice.org> - 2024-12-08 11:30 +0100
  Re: Restarting cron after crontab update Michael Kjörling <c9bc136c6063@ewoof.net> - 2024-12-08 12:10 +0100
  Re: Restarting cron after crontab update debian-user@howorth.org.uk - 2024-12-08 13:30 +0100
    Re: Restarting cron after crontab update Roger Price <debian@rogerprice.org> - 2024-12-08 14:20 +0100
      Re: Restarting cron after crontab update Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-12-08 15:20 +0100
        Re: Restarting cron after crontab update Roger Price <roger@rogerprice.org> - 2024-12-09 15:50 +0100
          Re: Restarting cron after crontab update <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-12-09 16:00 +0100
            Re: Restarting cron after crontab update Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-12-09 16:40 +0100
              Re: Restarting cron after crontab update Roger Price <debian@rogerprice.org> - 2024-12-09 17:50 +0100
              User "nut" (Was Re: Restarting cron after crontab update) Roger Price <debian@rogerprice.org> - 2024-12-09 18:00 +0100
              Re: Restarting cron after crontab update Darac Marjal <lists-debian-user@bendel.debian.org> - 2024-12-09 18:10 +0100
                Re: Restarting cron after crontab update Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-12-09 19:50 +0100
            Re: Restarting cron after crontab update Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-12-09 16:40 +0100
              Re: Restarting cron after crontab update Charles Curley <charlescurley@charlescurley.com> - 2024-12-09 18:00 +0100
            Re: Restarting cron after crontab update Charles Curley <charlescurley@charlescurley.com> - 2024-12-09 16:40 +0100

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