[H-GEN] Cron logging has stopped

[Rick Phillips]

Apologies in advance for top posting - body is left in for those
wondering what this is all about.

Ah dear, I fell for the old two card trick on this one - replied to
Robert instead of the list.

It doesn't matter anyway - in case anyone wondered what transpired (and
most would not have given it a second thought), the problem was not cron
but another seemingly unrelated problem due to my upgrade.

The original modem I was using was an internal class 2 ISA modem which
of necessity became obselete because boards don't come with ISA slots
anymore.

My server runs Hylafax which I have used for group faxing and part of
the setup of this required that values be poked at either the modem or
the Hylafax program itself (not sure which) (refer faxaddmodemsetup) and
because the new modem is different, the values should be different.  I
overlooked this.

How did this effect cron and why did it not send emails?  Well, one of
the cron jobs (installed by the Hylafax program) is a Hylafax cleanup
cron and obviously as Hylafax was not working properly, cron could not
work properly.

Now that I have corrected the Hylafax problem, cron is working as it
should and the main side issue bonus is that my machine is now not doing
random unexplained lockups which I attributed to overheating problems.

Gee doesn't it make you feel good when these problems are solved and you
can get on with your life??

Thanks to Robert for replying.

Regards,

Rick

On Mon, 2004-03-08 at 21:39, Rick Phillips wrote:
> Hi Robert,
> 
> > Hi Rick.  Cron will automatically email the owner of the cron job if it is
> > not told to log anywhere specific.
> > 
> The owner is root but a long time ago mail for root was consigned to
> /dev/null because it was an exceptional nuisance.
> 
> > I'd check the mail configuration, send emails as cron would send them
> > (from the user to the user) and check that cron is definitely 100% working
> > as you expect.  check the movement of the emails in the logs,
> > 
> I use qmail which "jusr goes" and a check of the queue shows that
> nothing is jammed in the works.
> 
> > I find it useful in cases like this to setup a cron job (doing something
> > like cat /etc/hosts which produces output) to go off every minute (or at
> > least regularly) for a little while while I'm testing.  Don't forget it or
> > you may find an over abundance of email in your inbox tommorrow :)
> > 
> Before your reply I had set cron.hourly a task to email me directly (as
> my email address - not root) but no mail has turned up in about 3 hours
> so I am now definitely suspicious that cron is not working at all.
> 
> Can I uninstall cron, delete the log files and then reinstall it hoping
> for a fresh start or will it break my system?
> 
> > The problem is far more likely to be a simple config error or a file
> > corruption but it is always worth keeping the possiblity of an intrusion
> > in the back of your mind.
> > 
> I suspect that file corruption of some sort is the root cause.  I
> normally would not use webmin to do any of this sort of configuration
> but when I rebuilt my server and upgraded to the latest OS, I did use
> webmin once to reset my mirror cron job.  The last time I used webmin 2
> years ago it broke my name server configuration.  Is it possible that
> this is the cause of my current woes?
> 
> > If you are really worried, boot your box from CD and run chkrootkit from a
> > known good source (ie, not the harddrive).
> > 
> > Does Knoppix contain chkrootkit? I can't recall.
> > 
> I don't either but I will sort that out when I have exhausted all other
> avenues.
> 
> Thanks for your comments.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rick
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