On Mon, 2014-04-14 at 09:10 -0400, Fred Smith wrote: > On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 09:20:09AM +0100, Arthur Dent wrote: > <snip> > > The test example I gave yesterday is in fact based on a real-life case. > > I have a job that runs hourly from cron. Occasionally this process fails > > (for reasons I won't bore the list with) and leaves a lock-file in place > > - a will then refuse to run again until someone (me) has cleaned up > > after it. The only way I even know that this has happened is accuse I > > have another little hourly cron job that checks for the presence of the > > lock-file and reports only if it exists. > > > > If I have to rely on the daily logwatch output it could conceivably be > > up to 23 hours before I even know that the job is not working... > > I've used, in the past, a mechanism where the program controls its own > lock file, so it has control over what goes inside the file. (I dunno if > your app is simlar, or if it uses some system services to manage lockfiles.) > > When starting up: > 1. see if the lockfile exists > 1a. Exists: open it, read its contents, which should be the PID of the > program that created it. see if a process of that PID is still running. > If so, silently exit. if the pid doesn't exist, delete the lock file > and go to step 2. > 1b. if no lockfile, start normally. > 2. normal start: create the lockfile, write your own PID into it. > 3. program runs. > 4. when program finishes, it removes the lockfile. > > This lets the program determine, whenever it starts up, if it's a bogus lock > file, or if it isn't. If it no longer refers to a running process, it can > simply be deleted without causing any undue delays. Thanks for that - I am going to look into fixing that at some point in the future, but at the moment my workaround will suffice. It's not just for that problem that I want to see cron output in email form. I have lots of jobs run as my user (mark) and I want the email to to know when they have completed etc. I am tearing my hair out over this. I have read previous threads on the subject, but most seem to relate to getting root mail. That works now (thanks to Suvayu Ali) - putting: # Person who should get root's mail root: mark into /etc/aliases did the trick for root cron jobs. But I still don't get cron output for user mark. I have MAILTO=mark at the top of my crontab file. According to /var/log/cron the job has run and has produced output: Apr 14 13:58:02 Zaphod CROND[8001]: (mark) CMD (~/scripts/croncheck.sh) Apr 14 13:58:02 Zaphod CROND[7999]: (mark) CMDOUT (Please Note: That file does not exist) Nothing appears in /var/spool/mail/mark though. The exim logs show no evidence of having been bothered by cron... 2014-04-14 12:44:05 1WZfIy-0001xD-Mb <= fail2ban@xxxxxxxxxxx U=root P=local S=1988 2014-04-14 12:44:06 1WZfIy-0001xD-Mb => mark <root@Zaphod> R=procmail T=procmail 2014-04-14 12:44:06 1WZfIy-0001xD-Mb Completed 2014-04-14 13:08:35 Start queue run: pid=7745 2014-04-14 13:08:35 End queue run: pid=7745 2014-04-14 14:08:35 Start queue run: pid=8149 2014-04-14 14:08:35 End queue run: pid=8149 Note that the entry at 12:44 was the output from fail2ban which is mailed to root (and thence to Mark). I then get that email. So where does the output from cron jobs for normal users go? -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
