Xref: utzoo comp.unix.questions:9826 comp.unix.wizards:11829
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!unido!laura!rl
From: rl@laura.UUCP (Ralf Luebeck)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Why does a shell script fail in crontab?
Message-ID: <656@laura.UUCP>
Date: 18 Oct 88 09:44:35 GMT
References: <287@lakart.UUCP>
Reply-To: rl@unido.UUCP (Ralf Luebeck)
Organization: University of Dortmund, W-Germany
Lines: 30

In article <287@lakart.UUCP> dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough) writes:
>I have a shell script ( /usr/local/dopath ) that has the job of updating
>our UUCP map files every day at 7:00 AM. There is only one problem with it:
>when it runs from crontab it produces a zero size Index file, yet when I
>run it by hand from a uid 0 shell it succedes, and generates the correct
>Index file. Here is the crontab entry:
>
>0 7 * * *	root	/usr/local/dopath
>
>and here is the contents of that same file:
>[...deleted...]
>/usr/local/unshar -c * 2>&1 >/dev/null
>/usr/local/getcon /usr/spool/news/news/config/* >d.Temp
>/usr/local/pathalias u.[A-Z]* d.* u.[a-z]* 2>/dev/null | \
>    /usr/local/pathfilt | sort -u > UUPATH

David, I don't know what your local commands do, but I know, that commands
like 'su' fail as cronjob, when they call ttyname(3) or try to open(2)
"/dev/tty" or something else, 'cause cronjobs don't have a tty.
Hope this helps...

>	dg@lakart.UUCP - David Goodenough
ciao,
	Ralf

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