Why are cron.hourly files not running?

[Larry Alkoff]

Derek Broughton wrote:
> 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".


Using your two commands.
sudo su of course changed to a root user.
The second line changed to the / directory but did nothing else AFAICS.

Before the command was issued the only thing I saw in /var/log/syslog 
were entries of:
Jul 16 15:37:39 kinda smbd[12172]:   Unable to open printcap file 
/etc/printcap for read!
Jul 16 15:50:36 kinda smbd[12172]: [2007/07/16 15:50:36, 0] 
printing/pcap.c:pcap_cache_reload(159)
Jul 16 15:50:36 kinda smbd[12172]:   Unable to open printcap file 
/etc/printcap for read!
Jul 16 15:50:36 kinda smbd[12172]: [2007/07/16 15:50:36, 0] 
printing/pcap.c:pcap_cache_reload(159)
Jul 16 15:50:36 kinda smbd[12172]:   Unable to open printcap file 
/etc/printcap for read!
Jul 16 16:03:32 kinda smbd[12172]: [2007/07/16 16:03:32, 0] 
printing/pcap.c:pcap_cache_reload(159)
Jul 16 16:03:32 kinda smbd[12172]:   Unable to open printcap file 
/etc/printcap for read!
Jul 16 16:03:32 kinda smbd[12172]: [2007/07/16 16:03:32, 0] 
printing/pcap.c:pcap_cache_reload(159)
Jul 16 16:03:32 kinda smbd[12172]:   Unable to open printcap file 
/etc/printcap for read!

Whatever printcap has to do with I don't know.

Finally I tested wether or not is is possible to write directly to 
syslog with:
echo This is a test >>/var/log/syslog
which produced
this is a test
so it seems to be quite possible.

Larry


-- 
Larry Alkoff N2LA - Austin TX
Using Thunderbird on Linux