UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi folks!

I set up a cronjob yesterday to excute this morning at 4am. The problem I am experiencing is that the script that is executed cannot find specified files which it is suppose to run like my file.sql and other various scripts which are in the same directory as the exucutable script.

Do I need to specify the paths of the file.sql script or could it be that the cronjob executes in it's own directory?

Any ideas?
Thanks
M

The best thing I can recommend would be to use full path names in the script to other jobs you are calling.

Also, cron normally changes directory to your home directory - this of course depends on your version/release of cron. So even if you execute the $HOME/cronscripts/tmp.job script, it will execute as if you were sitting in your home directory and typed cronscripts/tmp.job

Another quick hint that has made it easier when building scripts that call other executables:
If you have a bunch of files in similar or the same directory, use variables:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
mybin_dir="/home/LivinFree/cronjobs/bin"
myout_dir="/home/LivinFree/etc/outputs/cron"
[...]
${mybin_dir}/job1.sh
${mybin_dir}/job2.ksh >> ${myout_dir}/output.`date +%D"."%s`
[...]

It just seems to keep it simpler, plus, if you ever have to move your script, they're easier to "fix".

Thanks LivinFree!

I managed to add a "cd" command to the directory I am calling the script from which seems to sort the problem out. I am however going to play around with it as you suggested.

Thanks
M

Most environments are setup so that when you log into unix you login through a profile that sets your default paths, etc for your session. cron does not get these unless you set them.
if your script is ksh you can put a statement in the script to set your environment... ie - if your default profile is the system profile in the /etc (maintained by the admin) you can put
. /etc/profile
in your script and it will set your environment for you. Note the space between the . and the /etc
If you then want to see your environment settings, you can use command set and put it out to a file.
example: set >/tmp/oc$$.set where oc$$ will be your proccess id.

Hope this helps

One more important thing about cron: it has no ENV set.