Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!emory!hubcap!ncrcae!sauron!wescott
From: wescott@Columbia.NCR.COM (Mike Wescott)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ncr
Subject: Re: Bug in batch ?
Message-ID: <2264@sauron.Columbia.NCR.COM>
Date: 7 Aug 90 12:25:39 GMT
References: <1036@cnw01.storesys.coles.oz.au>
Sender: news@sauron.Columbia.NCR.COM
Reply-To: wescott@micky.Columbia.NCR.COM (Mike Wescott)
Organization: E&M-Columbia, NCR Corp, W Columbia, SC
Lines: 32

In article <1036@cnw01.storesys.coles.oz.au> nigel@cnw01.storesys.coles.oz.au (Nigel Harwood) writes:
> I am experiencing a strange problem with jobs being run using
> batch.

We have seen intermittent problems of batch jobs not running.  Difficult
to reproduce and debug.  Seems to have gone away in SysVr3 based releases.

> #/bin/sh
> #
> batch 1> /dev/null 2>&1 <<!
> lpirun $ABC/program 1>xyz 2>&1 >xyz
> !
> exit 0

> What happens is that every now and then I get a mail message from
> cron saying "lpirun </usr/acct/abcde/b> not found [2]".

If the file xyz has been created then the message is coming from
lpirun.  If not then the shell is having trouble finding lpirun
or the script has been botched.  You can find the script that cron
sees in /usr/spool/cron/atjobs.

>    o Why should I get mail if the stdout/stderr are re-directed,
>      sounds suspicious ?

When cron runs, it starts up a shell to handle the script, saving the
stdout/stderr and mailing it to the user.  All that's been redirected
to /dev/null is the output from /usr/bin/batch, and not the script
that runs under cron.
--
	-Mike Wescott
	 mike.wescott@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM