Re: [CONFUSED NEWBIE] Cron
On Friday 05 November 2004 11:49, Joseph wrote:
> Hi folks.
>
> This is probably very simple stuff, but I'm thoroughly confused. I
> have an "off-the-shelf" Debian installation provided by my ISP. When
> I do a ps -ef I get
> (amongst other things) the following
> root 195 1 0 Oct28 ? 00:00:01 /usr/sbin/cron
>
All fine and normal so far.
> Now, according to the manual to have cron services I should be running
> a cron daemon called crond. Lo and behold whereis returns
> # whereis crond
> crond:
>
Still normal.
> Now, "cron" is not "crond" I apparently don't even have a "crond"
> software installed.
> I added a new line to crontab:
> 0 0 * * * root /usr/lib/cgi-bin/send_hit_count.cgi
>
Oops. Check out the man page for cron and especially crontab(5).
> 1. send_hit_count.cgi apparently is not being executed. It works
> interactively, but there are no messages that would indicate that it
> was executed by cron. What do I need to do, in order to have cron
> execute send_hit_count.cgi?
>
Fix your crontab entry above to:
0 0 * * * /usr/lib/cgi-bin/send_hit_count.cgi
> 2. What is /usr/sbin/cron doing there? It seems to forever be in
> memory, and I do occassionally receive CRON email messages with
> reports, such as
> /etc/cron.daily/logrotate:
> ....
> ....
It is waiting until the time comes to start a job. If you happen to do a ps
while a cron job is running, you'll see CROND.
> 3. Do I need to install crond?
> How do I do that?
>
It is installed, as evidenced by the cron messages you get.
> 4. Should I get rid of the cron process documented above?
>
Nope.
> TIA,
> Joseph
Justin Guerin
Reply to: