I've got an *extremely* simple script I want to run every minute:

So, the script is called "status", it's executable, and in the correct path, etc. In a terminal window (I'm using Mac OS X), I can type status, and it will create onlinestatus.txt with the ping output in it. Everything seems to be working fine.

HOWEVER, when I put the command in my crontab as

* * * * * status

It doesn't work. Or, to be more precise, it creates an *empty* onlinestatus.txt file. I can use Cronnix (a GUI crontab editor) to force the command to run. When I do that, onlinestatus.txt *does* contain the ping output; it seems like it's only when cron runs it at the scheduled interval that the text file comes out empty.

I'm *thoroughly* confused. If it didn't work *at all*, I could deal with it, but this behavior doesn't seem to make any sense. Any suggestions?

Maybe your ping writes to stderr rather than stdout. Try:
ping -c 1 192.168.1.20 > ~/onlinestatus.txt 2>&1

Well, adding 2>&1 actually put some output in the file, except it's not what I'd hoped. I get some kind of "Resource not available" error written to the file now. What does that translate to?

Thanks!

First way to test a script is to execute it on the command line...if that succeeds then you should be able to run it from cron...

sometimes you might need to add a line "set -x" to test and see where your error is.

What's the exact output left in the file?

If it's something along the lines of "Destination unreachable", or something along those lines it's not a problem with your script.

Post the contents of the output file.

Cheers
ZB