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The Main Man
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 Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 11:58 am Post subject: [Solved] Weird cron email |
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Every day I get email from cron, it's not a big deal but it bugs me why I get them.
I have 3 scripts in cron.daily, all got there via emerging packages.
logrotate, man-db and mlocate
Email subject is :
cron for user root root test -e /run/systemd/system || //sbin/e2scrub_all -A -r
with this message :
/bin/sh: root: command not found
I know that this message 'root: command not found' comes when the path to the executable is not specified, from those three scripts only man-db doesn't have one and the last line is :
exec nice mandb --quiet
now, I've changed that to 'exec nice /usr/bin/mandb --quiet'
but it didn't help.
I don't know what else could it be and from where this is coming from, any clues?
Last edited by The Main Man on Sun Mar 17, 2019 6:30 am; edited 1 time in total |
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mike155
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Hu
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| Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:11 pm Post subject: Re: Weird cron email |
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| kajzer wrote: | | it's not a big deal but it bugs me why I get them. |
You get them because they produce output. Cron jobs should be silent unless they have important messages for the operator. | kajzer wrote: | Email subject is :
cron for user root root test -e /run/systemd/system || //sbin/e2scrub_all -A -r
with this message :
/bin/sh: root: command not found
I know that this message 'root: command not found' comes when the path to the executable is not specified |
In this case, it's because you don't have a program named root on your path. Cron is trying to run a program named root. This is probably a bug: a crontab meant for consumption by the system crontab (which takes an explicit username) was used where a crontab with implicit ownership was expected. |
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The Main Man
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| Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:14 pm Post subject: |
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I didn't said it was mandb
To me it looks like it's test -e /run/systemd/system
should be /usr/bin/test -e ...
but I don't know where that is / which file to edit / what's calling it. |
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The Main Man
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| Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:27 pm Post subject: |
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Actually you might be right, there's a file /etc/cron.d/e2scrub_all , inside is this :
| Code: | 30 3 * * 0 root test -e /run/systemd/system || /usr/lib64/e2fsprogs/e2scrub_all_cron
10 3 * * * root test -e /run/systemd/system || //sbin/e2scrub_all -A -r |
I'll delete root from this and I guess it will probably solve it.
problem was described here, but I wasn't able to find what's calling it in my case.
http://rhosted.blogspot.com/2010/04/crontab-error-binsh-root-command-not.html
It will run in several hours so I guess I'll know it then.
Last edited by The Main Man on Sat Mar 16, 2019 7:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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russK
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| Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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The man page for crontab says, | Code: | | The sixth field of a line in a crontab entry is a string that shall be executed by 'sh' at the specified times. |
So unless you have something named 'root' that you want to be executed, it would be right to remove it.
HTH |
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mike155
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| Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 9:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | there's a file /etc/cron.d/e2scrub_all:
| Code: | 10 3 * * * root test -e /run/systemd/system || //sbin/e2scrub_all -A -r
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That could be the origin of the problem. But I'm not convinced... Because the cron man page explicitly states that entries in /etc/crontab and in /etc/cron.d/* need a username in column 6. The line is correct.
- Which cron do you use? vixie-cron?
- Are there any non-visible characters in that line? Especially between '*' and 'root'?
- Just to make sure that we are looking at the right location: please execute the statements below
| Code: | cd /etc
grep -r e2scrub_all .
cd /var/spool/cron/crontabs
grep -r e2scrub_all .
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Are there any other files where e2scrub_all gets executed?
What happens if you execute the program manually?
| Code: | | //sbin/e2scrub_all -A -r |
Do you get any errors?
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russK
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| Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:32 pm Post subject: |
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BTW, the man page that I referenced is a standard POSIX crontab man page that came from sys-apps/man-pages-posix-2013a.
Regards |
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mike155
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| Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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| russK wrote: | The sixth field of a line in a crontab entry is a string that shall be executed by 'sh' at the specified times.
BTW, the man page that I referenced is a standard POSIX crontab man page that came from sys-apps/man-pages-posix-2013a. |
That's true for user crontabs (crontab -e) - but not for system crontabs (files /etc/crontab and /etc/cron.d/*)
The vixie crontab man page (man 5 crontab) says:
| Quote: | | Each line has five time and date fields, followed by a user name if this is the system crontab file, followed by a command. |
Later on the same page it says:
| Quote: | | The "sixth" field (the rest of the line) specifies the command to be run. |
But that's true only for user crontabs. User crontabs don't need a field "user", because commands will be executed under the user who owns the crontab.
If you don't believe me: install a package that installs files to /etc/cron.d. app-admin/sysstat, for example. And the look at /etc/cron.d/systat:
| Code: | # Run system activity accounting tool every 10 minutes
# */10 * * * * root /usr/lib64/sa/sa1 1 1
# 0 * * * * root /usr/lib64/sa/sa1 600 6 &
# Generate a text summary of previous day process accounting at 00:07
# 7 0 * * * root /usr/lib64/sa/sa2 -A |
PS: I just looked at the POSIX crontab man page you cited. That's /usr/share/man/man1p/crontab.1p.bz2, right? Well, that man page only talks about the program 'crontab', which is used to manage user crontabs. It does not talk about system crontabs (files /etc/crontab and /etc/cron.d/*). |
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The Main Man
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| Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 11:18 pm Post subject: |
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@mike155,
I use dcron
| Code: | # cd /etc
# grep -r e2scrub_all .
./cron.d/e2scrub_all:30 3 * * 0 test -e /run/systemd/system || /usr/lib64/e2fsprogs/e2scrub_all_cron
./cron.d/e2scrub_all:10 3 * * * test -e /run/systemd/system || //sbin/e2scrub_all -A -r
./e2scrub.conf:# Set this to 1 to have e2scrub_all scrub all LVs, not just the mounted ones.
# cd /var/spool/cron/crontabs
# grep -r e2scrub_all .
# |
I believe it will be solved after the changes, that's why you can't see 'root' above, because I changed that file, but I posted earlier that file with 'root' before 'test....'
If it doesn't we can look at this further, otherwise I'll say it's fine and mark this as solved  |
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mike155
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| Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 12:22 am Post subject: |
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@kajzer:
thanks for your response.
I looked at the source code of drcon. dcron doesn't seem to support the username field in /etc/crontab or /etc/cron.d/*.
For that reason, it's the right solution to remove that field in /etc/cron.d/e2scrub_all (and in all other files that are/will be installed in /etc/cron.d) on your machine. |
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The Main Man
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| Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 6:30 am Post subject: |
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| It worked, thank you all! |
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