Sorry to disturb your hibernation but I know the 2 aren't the same and have stated such in the original posting. Just about everything has changed - OS version, database client, Perl version.

What I'm trying to figure is what element of that would cause the script to fail in cron on one server but not the other. My feeling is that it's the database client.

What I'm trying to figure is what element of that would cause the script to fail in cron on one server but not the other. My feeling is that it's the database client.

The error message is supposed to tell you that :)

No error message? Adjust cron error reporting, check your mail, ...

Still no error message? Increase verbosity (maybe use Carp::Always; or twiddle some logging levels or $DEBUG++/$VERBOSE++, whatever you're using

Still no error message? Maybe redirect errors to a logfile ?

Once you have an error message, you can check the usual (everything, sanity check), $PATH/$LD_LIBRARY_PATH..., chroot jail,selinux, permissions and password typos, shebang ... its a checklist, error message usually tells you what to check

Like the deep links from Re: Cron revisited/Re^2: Perl Module Not Working In Crontab explain, and here they are:

• Perl/UNIX .profile problem
• Unix Aliases?
• Perl Script Not Working With Crontab
• Twig in a crontab?
• Running Perl program w/root privs via cron
• system call in crontab
• Perl & cron job environmental variables
• HowTo: Add Jobs To cron Under Linux or UNIX?
• Unix FAQ - Cron
• Unix FAQ - Cron
  Cron jobs do not inherit the login environment of the user
  Cron jobs do not have a stdin associated with them
  ...
• Cron Frequently Asked Questions
• Cron Job FAQ
• Basic Linux Operations FAQ
• Automating Tasks with Cron and Crontab files
• 4.4. Scheduling processes
   
• system command is not working
• I have some problem with Crontab
• perl file doesn't execute
• script fails loading module version, but > version is installed
• CGI Help Guide , Troubleshooting Perl CGI scripts
   
• Csh Programming Considered Harmful
   
• How do I set env. Variables from Perl with shell script
• Get default login environment
• Set shell environment variables from within a perl script
• How to change a script's environment after the script is already run, based on shell sourcing ?
• Perl: Source shell script to for environment variables?
• Reading and setting the environment from a shell script for the calling program
• Importing environment variables from shell script file to Perl
• sourcing a shell script/.profile and importing into %ENV
• setting perl ENV from file
• Changing parent process environment variable
   
• Re^3: DBD::mysql fail install check (DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH ldd otool install_name_tool VERSIONER_PERL_PREFER_32_BIT .bundle/.dylib/.so

I don't know the cause of your problem, but I've had success with the Solaris/Perl/OracleInstantClient/cron combination by including a BEGIN block in my perl code as below:

BEGIN {
  unless (($ENV{BEGIN_BLOCK}) or $^C)
  {
    $ENV{ORACLE_HOME}     = '/usr/local/instantclient';
    $ENV{LD_LIBRARY_PATH} = '/lib:/usr/local/instantclient:/usr/local/
+lib';
    $ENV{TNS_ADMIN}       = '/apps/admin'; 
    $ENV{BEGIN_BLOCK} = 1;
    exec 'env',$0,@ARGV;
  }
}
[download]

Obviously you should set your ORACLE_HOME and LD_LIBRARY_PATH env variables to the correct ones for your installations in the above. Note that the TNS_ADMIN env variable tells you where to look for tnsnames.ora.

Thanks for the sane reply. I've now implemented something similar. What was puzzling me was that on version of Client worked without these shenanigans. My feeling now is that is could be a change within the Oracle software rather than the Perl side of things so that, as compiled, Perl can see the library it calls but that library can't see its dependencies.

:) Thanks buddy I covered that already, and that type of thing usually yields an error message of : failed to load ...so ... Dynaloader ... library not found

The error message tells you what needs fixing :)