Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!uwvax!daffy!picard.cs.wisc.edu!sparkie
From: sparkie@picard.cs.wisc.edu (Mark J. Horn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: UUCP
Keywords: su
Message-ID: <1991Mar3.235225.26205@daffy.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 3 Mar 91 23:52:25 GMT
References: <27CD8F65.29032@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca>
Sender: news@daffy.cs.wisc.edu (The News)
Distribution: usa
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 52

In article <27CD8F65.29032@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca> cs4ed3ap@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Tyldesley     A) writes:

[ ... ]

>The problem is with what should be the simplest part of the set up: having
>cron poll the remote server ever hour on the half our. This is what I have
>entered in my crontab file.
>
>	30 * * * *  uucp uupoll maccs
>
>I also have tried 
>
>	43 * * * * uucp /usr/bin/uupoll maccs
>	
>	43 0-23 * * * root /usr/bin/uupoll maccs
>	
>None of the above seem to executed by cron. Everything else in my setup works fine. Uupoll maccs can be used from the command line no problem. Does anyone
>see a problem with the above? 

I do not own a NeXT (yet) but I think I know enough about crontabs to answer
this question.  All the crontab entries that I've ever used/examined generally
contains information of the form 
	<min> <hour> <day> <month> <weekday> <command>
(NeXT may have changed this, but I seriously doubt it)

You seem to have the first five fields correct, but your command is confusing.
Try running the command "uucp uupoll maccs" from the shell.  It won't work.
It will come back with "uucp: command not found"  If you check the cron error
file (which on my system is /usr/adm/cron), I'll bet a dime to a dollar that
you have a bunch of "command not found" errors in there.  What you probably
wanted was to run the command "uupoll maccs" as the user uucp.  Right?  If that
is the case, then you have to modify your command so that it uses su(1).

On my unix system (AT&T 3B1) the following crontab entries would do what you
wanted:
	30 * * * * su uucp -c "uupoll maccs"
	43 * * * * su uucp -c "/usr/bin/uupoll maccs"
	43 0-23 * * * su root -c "/usr/bin/uupoll maccs"

WARNING: Check your man pages for the proper use of su(1).

>Andrew
>Nextmail: andrew%otter@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca
>email: cs4ed3@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca

Hope I've been of some help.
- sparkie
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