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jagdpanther
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PostPosted: Wed May 30, 2018 6:27 pm    Post subject: cronbase scripts executing twice per run Reply with quote

Cronbase executed scripts (/etc/cron.hourly/*, /etc/cron.daily/* , etc.) are being run twice each time they should be executed once.
(I don't use cron.weekly or cron.monthly so don't know if they are also affected.)

On my two Gentoo systems I have the following emerged:
virtual/cron
sys-process/cronie
sys-process/cronbase

I do NOT use individual user crontab files, only the system /etc/crontab.

I have verified that I only have one instance of crond running.
The entries in /etc/crontab are run on time and NOT duplicated.
The scripts in /etc/cron.daily/ and /etc/cron.hourly/ are all run then run again.

I put the following test bash script in /etc/cron.hourly:
Code:
#! /bin/bash

date >> /tmp/cron.hourly.out


And the result is:

Code:
/tmp]$ cat cron.hourly.out
Wed May 30 10:00:01 PDT 2018
Wed May 30 10:01:01 PDT 2018
Wed May 30 11:00:01 PDT 2018
Wed May 30 11:01:01 PDT 2018


Any ideas on why chronbase is executing scripts twice per run cycle?
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jagdpanther
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PostPosted: Thu May 31, 2018 3:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have also tried un-emergeing then emerging cronbase. I still have the double run issue.
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khayyam
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PostPosted: Thu May 31, 2018 4:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

jagdpanther ...

while I don't use sys-process/cronie it does have an IUSE dependency on sys-process/anacron, and the later doesn't follow the same time schedule of crontab. So, I expect what's happening is that cronie is running the job while anacron has it on it's todo list, and so that job is re-run at a later time. I expect there is some configuration required to have cronbase and cronie work together, but I see nothing on the wiki, and there is nothing in pkg_postinst(). However, the ebuild does show an /etc/cron.hourly/0anacron installed, which should provide some clue as to what anacron is doing, or should be doing.

HTH & best ... khay
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jagdpanther
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PostPosted: Thu May 31, 2018 6:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

khayyam: Thank you.

From the Gentoo Cron wiki:
Quote:
Anacron is not a cron daemon, it is something that usually works in conjunction with one. It executes commands at intervals specified in days and it does not assume that the system is running continuously; it will run jobs that were missed while the system was down. Anacron usually relies on a cron daemon to run it each day.


Considering that my Gentoo systems are usually on and I don't need "missed" cron jobs to run if the system is down, I'll try removing the 0anacron entries from /etc/cron.hourly and /etc/cron.daily to see if the issue is resolved.
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jagdpanther
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PostPosted: Thu May 31, 2018 10:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The issue is not anacron. I removed the /etc/cron.daily/0anacron file and still am getting the dual runs of the scripts in /etc/cron.daily.
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khayyam
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PostPosted: Thu May 31, 2018 10:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

jagdpanther ...

I noticed there is another thread with the exact same issue, see the proposed solution here.

best ... khay
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szatox
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PostPosted: Thu May 31, 2018 10:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You could add a script with command
ps uxwf

and dump it's output to a file. It will show you a bunch of processes organized in a convenient tree, at the time it's being run. You should be able to find ps there and see what invoked it.
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jagdpanther
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 3:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Khayyam:

Quote:
I noticed there is another thread with the exact same issue, see the proposed solution here.


Thanks. I saw that post and there were two issues, duplicate runs like me and runs not happening when expected. I am only having the former issue. Also I can't use his solution because I need to have some jobs run at specific times, so commenting almost everything out of /etc/crontab won't work in my case.
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jagdpanther
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 4:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

szatox:

Quote:
You could add a script with command
ps uxwf


Excellent idea. Thank you. Here is what I did:

Added a script, DEBUG_CRONBASE.bash to /etc/cron.daily:
Code:
#! /bin/bash

# What is calling the extra cronbase run?

date      >> /tmp/cron-daily-DEBUG.out 2>&1
ps uxwfa  >> /tmp/cron-daily-DEBUG.out 2>&1
echo "========================="  >> /tmp/cron-daily-DEBUG.out 2>&1


Here are the relevant parts of /tmp/cron-daily-DEBUG.out:

Code:
  1 Fri Jun  1 03:06:04 PDT 2018
 USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
 root         2  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S    May30   0:00 [kthreadd]
...
root      6675  0.0  0.0  12692  1964 ?        Ss   03:00   0:00 /usr/sbin/anacron -s
root      6766  0.0  0.0   4252   744 ?        SN   03:06   0:00  \_ run-parts /etc/cron.daily
root      7138  0.0  0.0  11884  2640 ?        SN   03:06   0:00      \_ /bin/bash /etc/cron.daily/DEBUG_CRONBASE.bash
root      7140  0.0  0.0  17896  2584 ?        RN   03:06   0:00          \_ ps uxwfa
...
=========================
Fri Jun  1 03:10:04 PDT 2018
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root         2  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S    May30   0:00 [kthreadd]
...
root      4268  0.0  0.0  17788  2424 ?        Ss   May30   0:00 /usr/sbin/crond
root     22558  0.0  0.0  17788  1904 ?        S    03:10   0:00  \_ /usr/sbin/CROND
root     22560  0.0  0.0  11984  2724 ?        Ss   03:10   0:00      \_ /bin/sh /usr/sbin/run-crons
root     25239  0.0  0.0  11884  2644 ?        S    03:10   0:00          \_ /bin/bash /etc/cron.daily/DEBUG_CRONBASE.bash
root     25241  0.0  0.0  17896  2580 ?        R    03:10   0:00              \_ ps uxwfa


So it appears that both crond and anacron are running the files in /etc/cron.daily and /etc/cron.hourly (and probably weekly and monthly too.) Both crond and anacron are part of sys-process/cronie-1.5.1-r1 on my systems. So crond runs the files via the run-crons entry in /etc/crontab. According to the anacron man page I should look at the /etc/anacrontab (which I did not know about until 3 min. ago) and I guess I'll comment out the end of that configuration file so anacron doesn't execute anything unless someone has a better idea.

I wonder what is spawning anacron, it is currently not running.
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jagdpanther
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 7:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
I wonder what is spawning anacron, it is currently not running.


When I tried re-emergeing cronie, it put /etc/cron.hourly/0anacron back.
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jagdpanther
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 11:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The other cause of duplicate cron runs was /etc/cron.d/0hourly. Which appears to be another /etc/crontab type file. After commenting out
Code:
01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
from /etc/cron.d/0hourly the duplicate runs stopped.
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szatox
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 11:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well... So you solved your problem by breaking cron :lol:
Glad it helped, but I think it would be a better idea to either remove your script from crontab or move it outside of cron.hourly instead.
If you want your cron jobs to run at a specific time, you put them in crontab directly. If you want them to run on an interval, that's what /etc/cron.<interval> files are for. They work in similar way to anacron (e.g. if you power off your machine and miss a job, it will run within 10 minnutes after reboot)
If you leave it like that, some time in the future you will drop a new script into that directory and then you will be puzzled why it doesn't run at all.
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jagdpanther
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 4:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

szatox:

Quote:
If you want your cron jobs to run at a specific time, you put them in crontab directly. If you want them to run on an interval, that's what /etc/cron.<interval> files are for.


Yes, and that is the way my two Gentoo systems ran for years without issue. Sometime in the last month or two I started getting duplicate runs of everything in /etc/cron.<interval>. (I wasn't paying attention so don't know when it started. I guess if I was motivated I could look in archived /var/log/messages files to find out.)

Now after the 'fix' I still have jobs in /etc/crontab running precisely when I want them to and the scripts in /etc/cron.daily running once a day. So it appears to me that cron is running as it should.

What I turned off to prevent dual-runs of files in /etc/cron.<interval> (and I don't know why I needed to do this as it worked without this 'fix' for years) was to comment out the "root run-parts" line in /etc/crond.d/0hourly and the last couple of lines of /etc/anacrontab. I don't know if I needed to 'fix' both of those files or just one to prevent the dual-runs. I realize that this 'fix' prevents not run jobs do to system down time from being run after the system is back on-line. Did I break something else?

Thank you again for the 'ps uxwf ' debugging suggestion.
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radio_flyer
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 20, 2018 5:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Did your system upgrade from vixie-cron to cronie?

That just hit my stable systems as vixie-cron is undergoing last rites. vixie-cron had the following lines in /etc/crontab:
Code:

# check scripts in cron.hourly, cron.daily, cron.weekly and cron.monthly
59  *  * * *    root    rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.hourly
9  3  * * *     root    rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.daily
19 4  * * 6     root    rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.weekly
29 5  1 * *     root    rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.monthly
*/10  *  * * *  root    test -x /usr/sbin/run-crons && /usr/sbin/run-crons


/usr/sbin/run-crons is from sys-process/cronbase that both vixie-cron and cronie depend on.

However, cronie removes the lines above from the crontab file, and adds three files to the system:
/etc/cron.d/0hourly
/etc/cron.hourly/0anacron
/etc/anacrontab

/etc/cron.d/0hourly looks like:
Code:

# Run the hourly jobs
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root
01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly


where run-parts appears to be from sys-apps/debianutils.

/etc/cron.hourly/0anacron looks like:
Code:

#!/bin/sh
# Check whether 0anacron was run today already
if test -r /var/spool/anacron/cron.daily; then
    day=`cat /var/spool/anacron/cron.daily`
fi
if [ `date +%Y%m%d` = "$day" ]; then
    exit 0;
fi

# Do not run jobs when on battery power
if test -x /usr/bin/on_ac_power; then
    /usr/bin/on_ac_power >/dev/null 2>&1
    if test $? -eq 1; then
    exit 0
    fi
fi
/usr/sbin/anacron -s


which basically ends up looking at /etc/anacrontab, which looks like:
Code:

# /etc/anacrontab: configuration file for anacron
 
# See anacron(8) and anacrontab(5) for details.

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root
# the maximal random delay added to the base delay of the jobs
RANDOM_DELAY=45
# the jobs will be started during the following hours only
START_HOURS_RANGE=3-22

#period in days   delay in minutes   job-identifier   command
1       5       cron.daily              nice run-parts /etc/cron.daily
7       25      cron.weekly             nice run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
@monthly 45     cron.monthly            nice run-parts /etc/cron.monthly


In other words, the old vixie-cron used /etc/crontab directly to run the hourly/daily/weekly/monthly jobs. It's forked replacement cronie instead appears to begin with /etc/cron.d/0hourly and ends up running anacron to schedule the periodic tasks. If both the old vixie-cron commands in /etc/crontab and the new cronie files are on the system the cron jobs would probably run twice. That could happen if the cronie changes to /etc/crontab are zapped during the upgrade.

BTW, don't forget to stop vixie-cron before it gets replaced by cronie; the ebuild doesn't do it apparently.
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