Re: [gentoo-user] crontab not executing

[David W Noon]

On Sun, 19 Jun 2011 15:37:42 -0700, Grant wrote about [gentoo-user]
crontab not executing:

> One of my systems has a crontab like this to clean up and consolidate
> the output of the video monitoring app "motion":
>
> # crontab -l
> # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE - edit the master and reinstall.
> # (/home/grant/cron.root.txt installed on Sat Sep 25 10:42:18 2010)
> # (Cron version V5.0 -- $Id: crontab.c,v 1.12 2004/01/23 18:56:42
> vixie Exp $) 50 23 * * * /bin/rm /home/motion/$(date -d 'yesterday'
> +%Y%m%d)*.jpg 55 23 * * * /bin/rm /home/motion/$(date -d 'yesterday'
> +%Y%m%d)*.avi 59 23 * * * /usr/bin/mencoder /home/motion/$(date
> +%Y%m%d)*.avi -noidx -o /home/motion/full-$(date +%Y%m%d).avi -ovc
> copy -oac copy
>
> If I execute each command manually, it works great, but nothing
> happens otherwise.  Can someone tell me why this crontab doesn't seem
> to be executing?

For starters, you don't have any environment variables assigned at the
top of your crontab.  Here is mine:

# Establish environment variables.
JAVA_HOME='/etc/java-config-2/current-system-vm'
PATH='/home/dwn/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/etc/java-config-2/current-system-vm/bin:/etc/java-config-2/current-system-vm/jre/bin:/opt/bin'
TMPDIR='/tmp'
HOME='/home/dwn'
SHELL='/bin/zsh'
LOGNAME='dwn'
LC_ALL='en_GB.UTF-8'
http_proxy='http://localhost:8080'
ftp_proxy='http://localhost:8080'
RSYNC_PROXY='localhost:8080'
ZFTP_PREFS='P'
PGHOST=''
PGPORT=''

# Set our priority level.
!nice(4)

# Clean up old backup files.
%daily 38 20 find "$HOME/" \( -name \*~ -o -iname \*.bak -o -iname \*.bak\? \) -print -delete

# Clean out the work directory for Lazarus.
%daily 18 05 find "$HOME/Lazarus_projects/tmp/" -mindepth 1 -delete

# Download the development trunk of Free Pascal compiler.
%daily 13 07 fpc_download.zsh

# Purge old mailing list messages from Free Pascal.
%daily 37 04 mail_purge.py '6d5c5c5a8aa90d8a'

# Clear the cache for epiphany.
%daily 27 06 cd "$HOME/.gnome2/epiphany/mozilla/epiphany" && rm -rf
compreg.dat pluginreg.dat Cache .parentlock

# Clean out old GNOME sessions.
#%hourly 13 find "$HOME/.config/gnome-session/saved-session/" -mindepth
1 -name \*.desktop -delete

# Clean out the cache subdirectories under $HOME.
%daily 28 06 cache_clean.zsh

# Check Portage for orphans.
#%daily 32 06 portage_orphans.zsh
-- 
Regards,

Dave  [RLU #314465]
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dwnoon@××××××××.com (David W Noon)
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