Re^4: Running a perl script automatically on Mac OS X 10.5

Had to go away for a few days. Okay, so here is what I have done. In my cron.txt file I now have the line 21 08 * * * /usr/bin/perl -w /Users/myname/Documents/path/to/CronTest.pl. I copied that "sixth variable" part (the part starting with /usr and all the way through /CronTest.pl) to the command line in my Terminal window and the script executed fine, so I know that command part of the cron listing is correct. (BTW, what is that "sixth variable" called? In my mind I'm calling it the command, but am not sure if this is correct.)

It was 8:19 a.m. when I saved the cron.txt file and still 8:19 when I entered crontab cron.txt. I checked crontab by entering crontab -l and it appeared to be correct. When 8:21 rolled around, however, nothing happened.

If you think this is a security issue, could you be a bit more specific about what I might have to do (My exposure to UNIX is limited and occurred about 15 years ago.)

If not a security issue, what might I be doing wrong?

Thanks for your help!

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Re^5: Running a perl script automatically on Mac OS X 10.5 by Anonymous Monk on Sep 09, 2008 at 13:58 UTC
you are not checking error logs/messages	[reply]
Re^6: Running a perl script automatically on Mac OS X 10.5 by Ninth Prince (Acolyte) on Sep 09, 2008 at 14:25 UTC
How do I do that?	[reply]
Re^5: Running a perl script automatically on Mac OS X 10.5 by Perlbotics (Archbishop) on Sep 09, 2008 at 19:05 UTC
Right, my man pages call the sixth argument command, it's the whole thing /usr/bin/perl -w /Users/.../CronTest.pl. First, please check /var/log/messages or /var/log/warn (maybe there is someting in /var/adm/ too, it depends on the OS) if something suspicious happened around 08:19-08:21. It is AFIK important that your crontab file ends with a linefeed but not with an empty line! So please check that too. How does your Perl program displays that it has done something? Does it create a file or a log-entry? Do not expect to see something in your terminal or in your X window (you can redirect console though). If your program sends something to STDOUT or STDERR, you'll usually get an e-mail. So have a look at /var/spool/mail/myname (or the location where your system locally stores e-mails). For further experiments, I suggest to use a simple cron-command like `/bin/date >> /tmp/mycrontabcheck.txt`. Each time, your cronjob is executed, it is documented in /tmp/mycrontabcheck.txt I would be surprised if your cron-daemon is not running..., however `ps -elf \| grep cron \| grep root` should come up with something like /usr/sbin/cron or ...crond. Security: `man crontab` explains what you have to do regarding the /etc/cron.allow and /etc/cron.deny issues better than I can do here, but shortly: if /etc/cron.allow exists, your UID (myname?) must be a single linefeed terminated line in this file. If this file does not exist, your UID must not be listed in /etc/cron.deny (neither: ALL).	[reply] [d/l] [select]