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Re: SLang? Cron run-parts /etc/cron.weekly



Randy Edwards:
>    I've got a newbie-type question for anyone kind enough to answer.  This morning I got a message from my cron which told me the following (header cut down a bit for brevity):
> 
> >> From: root (Cron Daemon)
> >> To: root
> >> Subject: Cron <root@golgotha> run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
> >> 
> >> Terminal not powerful enough for SLang.
> 
>    What's this mean?  And what is SLang?  Man and apropos doesn't seem to turn up anything for it and I don't have a clue.  Any information would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Slang is a library which provides a scripting language and some screen
drawing functions (similar to ncurses, if you're familiar with it). 

The error comes up when slang thinks the terminal it's running at doesn't
support the escape sequences needed to move the cursor around the screen,
set color, listen for keystrokes, etc. In this case, a program that uses
slang appears to be running as a cron job in /etc/cron.weekly, and since
cron doesn't actually give it a terminal to connect to, it's not suprising
that it gives this message.

What I don't understand is what program that uses slang is geing run as a
cron job? That's really weird. You need to track down which of the scripts
in /etc/cron.weekly/ is causing the error, and correct the problem. One good
way to do this is to edit /etc/crontab - there will be a line like this
(some of the numbers are different on a standard debian system):

21 0    * * 7   root    run-parts /etc/cron.weekly

Add --verbose after the run-parts, and then run-parts should print out the
name of each script in /etc/cron.weekly as it runs it, and you'll be able to
tell which script is generating the error. I haven't tried this, hope it
actually works. :-)


Oh no - I think I might know what package is causing this problem, and
unfortunatly, I maintain it :-/. Do you have slrn installed? Does
/etc/slrnget.conf contain the following lines setting variables =y? This 
could very well be the problem, becuase slrn is a slang application.

USE_SLRNPULL=y
GETDESC_WITH_CRONJOB=y

-- 
see shy jo, slrn maintainer


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