2009-03-03 13:53:57     cron not working?

2009-03-03 13:53:57     cron not working?

Tim Shearer (UNITED STATES)

Message: 70298   

Hi,

I'm using 2008r1.5 on a cm-bf537e.  I'm attempting to schedule a process to run every x minutes.  I have browsed the forums and found a few questions on the subject of getting Cron to work on the BlackFin, but not a lot in the way of answers.

Firstly, there are three places in the config menus where cron can be enabled:  cron and vixie cron are both in the Core Applications menu.  Also, crond and crontab are in BusyBox misc. utilities.

I haven't tried vixie cron yet, but I've attempted to use the configuration described here: http://www.vpx.nu/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=cron.

The problem is that, although cron is running in the backgroud, my crontab file seems to be totally ignored, regardless of the file location (/etc or /etc/config) or the events.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd be grateful!

Thanks,

Tim

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2009-03-03 16:16:34     Re: cron not working?

Mike Frysinger (UNITED STATES)

Message: 70304   

the busybox crond works fine for me

root:/> mkdir -p /var/spool/cron/crontabs/

root:/> crond &

root:/> crontab -l

*/1 * * * * date > /dev/console

root:/> Mon Jan  1 02:05:01 UTC 2007

Jan  1 02:05:01 crond[119]: USER root pid 142 cmd date > /dev/console

Mon Jan  1 02:06:01 UTC 2007

Jan  1 02:06:01 crond[119]: USER root pid 148 cmd date > /dev/console

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2009-03-05 12:14:45     Re: cron not working?

Tim Shearer (UNITED STATES)

Message: 70454   

Thanks Mike,

I actually got the coreutils cron to work (busybox's crond produced "applet not found" errors).  I also learnt that the coreutils version of cron couldn't support crontab entries that execute shell commands directly (for example: */5 * * * * root echo hello world!) , it can only execute existing scripts.

Tim

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2009-03-05 12:42:53     Re: cron not working?

Mike Frysinger (UNITED STATES)

Message: 70455   

you have to enable the cron stuff in busybox and clean/rebuild it first for it to work

the syntax you used is vixie cron specific ... that is the only cron that specific the username as the first word after the time spec

the coreutils package doesnt provide cron utils, so i'm not sure what you're referring to there