Why are cron.hourly files not running?

[Derek Broughton]

Larry Alkoff wrote:

> What are these entries in /etc/syslog trying to tell me?
> Could the printcap entries have something to do with simply writing an
> echo statement to a file?
> 
> Jul 16 14:20:01 kinda smbd[12172]: [2007/07/16 14:20:01, 0]
> printing/pcap.c:pcap_cache_reload(159)
> Jul 16 14:20:01 kinda smbd[12172]:   Unable to open printcap file
> /etc/printcap for read!
> Jul 16 14:20:01 kinda smbd[12172]: [2007/07/16 14:20:01, 0]
> printing/pcap.c:pcap_cache_reload(159)
> Jul 16 14:20:01 kinda smbd[12172]:   Unable to open printcap file
> /etc/printcap for read!
> Jul 16 14:20:01 kinda /USR/SBIN/CRON[7528]: (root) CMD (   cd / &&
> run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)


Why would you even think that?  You have messages from two processes - one
(#12172) says it's smbd (the samba daemon), the other (7529) says it's
CRON.  So you might have a samba problem, but it isn't related to
cron.hourly.

Since you don't seem to be getting any results from cron.hourly, why don't
you start by running the command shown exactly:

# sudo su
# cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly

and see what it does.

btw, I'm not even sure you can write directly to syslog.  Try
using "logger".
-- 
derek