How to test Cron.daily, Weekly, Monthly....

[Tom Mitchell]

On Sun, Oct 17, 2004 at 01:47:02AM +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> On Sunday 17 October 2004 01:24, Tom Mitchell wrote:
> > Is there a sane way to test all the activity that /etc/cron.daily
> > /etc/cron.hourly /etc/cron.monthly /etc/cron.weekly invoke?
> 
> Have you looked at /var/log/cron ?

Yes, condider this log line:

 Oct 18 11:02:00 xtl1 CROND[13471]: (bob) CMD (wc /tmp/nofile-here > /dev/null 2>&1 < /dev/null &)

By the name of the file you might guess that the file does not exist.
But how do I know that this little script found an error or runs
correctly.  Knowing that it runs is only the first step.  Some of the
activity in cron quietly does this and that and is opaque to me.  How
do I know that each  is still running correctly.

The next issue is the list of things that run only once in a while.
There is a list of stuff that will run on Nov 1st when FC3 will
release.  How do we know that that list does not include a problem?  

I am also interesting in matching "kernel: audit(.*.): avc:" messages
to cron tasks.


-- 
	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
	May your cup runneth over with goodness and mercy
	and may your buffers never overflow.