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.

__________________
My brain is your brain

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