UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I'm trying to execute a command in my crontab, but every hour I'm sent mail that says

/bin/bash: root: command not found

Does anyone know why I'm getting that message? It was in the crontab before I started screwing around with it and it was working fine. Now that I messed with it, ran a couple of tests, then restored the backup crontab, it doesn't work.

Have you included the absolute path of your program to be run in your crontab file? Like:
/user/myprog instead of just myprog

If I understand which part of the line you're talking about, yes. I didn't put an absolute path to the command 'root', but I didn't think I needed to. I did use the absolute path for the program I am trying to run, though. Here is the line of code.

01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly

This is going to seem like a stupid question, but the only thing I've done with Unix is this crontab stuff, so I know next to nothing. What is the command used to run a program from the command line? I'd like to test out a couple programs in the cron.hourly directory, but I don't know how. Thank you for the reply!

The format does not seem correct.

A crontab file consists of lines of six fields each. The
fields are separated by spaces or tabs. The first five are
integer patterns that specify the following:

01 * * * *
minute (0-59),
hour (0-23),
day of the month (1-31),
month of the year (1-12),
day of the week (0-6 with 0=Sunday).

(This part seems right...if you are trying to run once an hour at 1 minute past the hour)

The sixth field of a line in a crontab file is a string that
is executed by the shell at the specified times. A percent
character in this field (unless escaped by \) is translated
to a NEWLINE character.

This is where you are having a problem - you are putting 'root' as a command or script or executable to run - it isn't as far as the system can tell, hence the error.

What is the program or script or command you are trying to run?

What are you attempting to use /etc/cron.hourly for (the output?)?

If you want to see how it works for a command try this:

01 * * * * date > /tmp/uptodate.tmp

This will put the output of the date command into the tmp file uptodate.tmp and overwrite it every hour.

Read the man page on crontab - you should be able to figure it out from the examples given.

hello there ,

first of all u need to make sure that your script is exectable CHMOD then do a crontab FILENAME to execute the crons
to see if what cron is running u need to do a crontab -l it will show th script thats running .

inside your script should be like this:

hr min * * * /filename

(ex: 16 00 * * * /filename) this will run srcript everyday at 1600hrs

* * * is your control for week day month if it is marked * * * that means it will run it everyday on the time u put in .

also make sure that ur script/cron ur running is on /usr/spool/cron/crontabs directory

art