Mystery cron job [Solved]

big_D · n00b Joined: 14 Apr 2005 Posts: 40 Location: UK

Hello, I'm very confused about a failed cron job which keeps showing up in dead.letter.

Some time ago I set up a job which downloaded some rss feeds for display on the desktop. Just a simple shell script. I removed it some time ago however, and cron is still trying to call the script.

My problem is that I cannot find where this script is called. I've looked through /etc/crontab /etc/cron.daily and the rest - is there anywhere else I might have missed?

Thanks,

D

tobr · Guru Joined: 29 May 2006 Posts: 330

If you are using another cron than vixie-cron, it could help to reload the crontab (e.g. fcron doesn't so this automatically)

big_D · n00b Joined: 14 Apr 2005 Posts: 40 Location: UK

I'm using vixie-cron, so I don't think it's that.

Janne Pikkarainen · Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 12:39 pm Post subject:

Try crontab -l (not as root, but as your user account). If the script shows up there, then just crontab -e, remove the line, save and off you go!
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Yes, I'm the man. Now it's your turn to decide if I meant "Yes, I'm the male." or "Yes, I am the Unix Manual Page.".

big_D · n00b Joined: 14 Apr 2005 Posts: 40 Location: UK

Janne Pikkarainen · Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 12:57 pm Post subject:

Try then crontab -l as root :-)

Also your desktop environment might start applications during logon (for example, in KDE you can put scripts/apps to ~/.kde/Autostart directory), but if the caller is definitely cron, then that is not the case.
_________________
Yes, I'm the man. Now it's your turn to decide if I meant "Yes, I'm the male." or "Yes, I am the Unix Manual Page.".

big_D · n00b Joined: 14 Apr 2005 Posts: 40 Location: UK

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I already had:

Janne Pikkarainen · Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 3:38 pm Post subject:

And /etc/crontab doesn't have any new entries which would include stuff from some other directory? Yes, I'm aware you did already check /etc/crontab, but this kind of stuff has bitten me in the past, too, and I only spotted the real reason after couple of tries.

Also could you paste here the relevant lines from cron log?
_________________
Yes, I'm the man. Now it's your turn to decide if I meant "Yes, I'm the male." or "Yes, I am the Unix Manual Page.".

big_D · n00b Joined: 14 Apr 2005 Posts: 40 Location: UK

A-Ha!

Fixed it. Although my user account didn't have permission to run crontab, I found a crontab file in /var/spool/cron/crontabs corresponding to the user name. Obiously I wasn't looking hard enough during my previous searches.

Thanks for your help! For future reference, where would I find the cron log? I couldn't find it whilst I was looking about the system.

Janne Pikkarainen · Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 5:56 pm Post subject:

Well, the cron log position depends on which syslog daemon you use and how is it configured. It can be anything from /var/log/cron.log to /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog - grep cron /var/log/*.log should help you to find cron lines.
_________________
Yes, I'm the man. Now it's your turn to decide if I meant "Yes, I'm the male." or "Yes, I am the Unix Manual Page.".

big_D · n00b Joined: 14 Apr 2005 Posts: 40 Location: UK

Got it. Thanks again.