Broken crontab/anacron

James Pifer jep at obrien-pifer.com
Mon Jan 24 15:09:58 UTC 2005


I rebuilt one of my systems last week using FC3 and somehow I broke
anacron or crontab. It hasn't run since Jan 20th according to what is in
root's mailbox. 

I think the problem is anacron. I can't seem to get it running, or at
least keep it running. It says it starts, but then when I look at the
processes, it isn't running. The problem is I don't see anything in any
logs about problems with it. 

Does anacron write logs to messages? 
What's the best way to troubleshoot it?

My /etc/crontab HAD this in it:
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
00 01 * * * root /root/mythtvdbbackup
00 03 * * * root /root/backupvideos
35 * * * * root /root/mythlink.sh


Now it has this:
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


Permissions on it are:
[root at mythtv etc]# ls -l crontab
-rwxr--r--  1 root root 254 Jan 24 09:22 crontab


Here's what I get when I try to start it. 
[root at mythtv etc]# service anacron start
Starting anacron:                                          [  OK  ]
[root at mythtv etc]# service anacron status
anacron is stopped
[root at mythtv etc]# 

Any help is appreciated. 

Thanks,
James




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