FC" Cron Error - Newbe Question

[Jeff Vian]

On Sat, 2004-09-25 at 01:57, Robert Slade wrote:
> Hiya,
> 
> I am getting an error for Cron:
> 
> /bin/bash: line 1: root: command not found
> 
> My Crontab looks like this:
> 

Is this your system crontab (/etc/crontab) or the crontab for root?

> SHELL=/bin/bash
> PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
> MAILTO=root
> HOME=/
> 
> # run-parts
> 01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
> 02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily
> 22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
> 42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly
> # run-tasks
> 0 2 * * * /usr/bin/freshclam --quiet -l /var/log/clam-update.log
> 0 3 * * * /var/qmail/bin/qmailstats 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null
> 
> It looks like the problem is with SHELL=/bin/bash, but the file is
> there. 
> 

If this is the system crontab, AFAIK the line *requires* the user field
for execution.  Your entries above for freshclam and qmail do not have
the 6th field properly filled in for use in /etc/crontab.

> Sorry if this is bit basic, but I'm stuck.
> 

The bash complaint is that the shell cannot run the requested program
(root). This error implies you are trying to use /etc/crontab as your
users crontab. It is taking only part of the data as the command to
execute.

The system crontab uses 7 fields, and the user crontab uses 6 fields.  I
believe this is coppied from the system crontab since the first 4 lines
with times use 7 fields and the last ones (obviously manually added)
only have 6 fields.

My system crontab is:
___________________________
[jeff at goliath jeff]$ cat /etc/crontab
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root
HOME=/
 
# run-parts
01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily
22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly
______________________________
and my root crontab is:
_________________________
27 0-23/4 * * * /root/bin/seti.restart
__________________________

In both cases, the first 5 fields are the times for execution. However
the system crontab uses field 6 to specify the user, and the rest (field
7) is the command.  The users crontab only has 6 fields, and field 6 is
the command.


> Rob
>