CRON is not reponding properly

[jay2708]

Dear Group,

I am trying to execute my shell script through cron on RedHat Linux 9.0, which will compile a set of files, but cron is not responding properly. I have configured crontab to run the batchtx script for every 2 minuts as below:

*/2 * * * * root /data/jay/batch/batchtx

but nothing happened so far. Please suggest how to run the script through cron.

...Jay

[vsemaska]

Looks like a typo, you forgot the '/' before 'root'.

You can check /var/log/cron to see if it runs.

Vic

[jozyba]

To run the script every 2 minutes your crontab should look like this:

#minute    hour      day-of-month  month     day-of-week  user  command
#(0 - 59)  (0 - 23)  (1 - 31)      (1 - 12)  (0 - 7)        
2          *         *             *         *            root  /data/jay/batch/batchtx

[jay2708]

Thanks for correcting me. However, after correction, script is still not running. I have copied cron log file for your perusal.

Sep 6 18:28:00 172 CROND[3799]: (root) CMD (/bin/sh /data/jay/batch/batchtx /data/jay/batch/batchtx.log)

But the long file in empty (0 k size). Please suggest.

...Jay

[jozyba]

Sorry, I don't know very much about cron. I think that on some systems, after you have edited the crontab file you have to run the command:

crontab /etc/crontab

for the changes to take effect.

[vsemaska]

jay2708,

How did you enter that crontab entry? Was it with the 'crontab -e' command?

Looking at that cron log entry it seems to me you didn't conpletely list the entry crontab entry. You specified a log file but don't have the correct syntax. This is what I see the crontab entry should be:

*/2 * * * * /data/jay/batch/batchtx > /data/jay/batch/batchtx.log 2>&1

If it doesn't work specify the minutes as a range:

0-59/2 * * * * /data/jay/batch/batchtx > /data/jay/batch/batchtx.log 2>&1

joyba,

Your crontab entry example would run the script 2 minutes after the hour and not every 2 minutes. Also you the 'crontab /etc/crontab' example is wrong. That file defines the what should run hourly, daily, weekly, & monthly.

[jozyba]

Ooops, sorry. I should have left this question to someone with more knowledge.

[jay2708]

Dear Group:

I am using the mention below script for batch compilation of TeX files :

#!/bin/sh

for file in *.tex
do
/usr/local/texlive/2007/bin/i386-linux/latex "\scrollmode\input $file"
case $? in
0) for f in *.dvi; do /usr/local/texlive/2007/bin/i386-linux/dvips -ta4 $f; done && mv "${file%.*}".{tex,ps} ../success/ ;;
*) mv "${file%.*}".{tex,dvi,log} ../failure/ ;;
esac
#
rm -f *.aux
rm -f *.dvi
rm -f "${file%.*}".log
#
done
############### Remove duplicate files #########################
for i in ../failure/*
do
filename=`basename $i`
if [[ -f ../success/$filename ]]; then
rm ../success/$filename
fi
done
################################################## #####

When I am running ./batchtx command its working fine, but I am trying to run through cron, I getting batchtx.log file as below:

This is pdfTeXk, Version 3.141592-1.40.3 (Web2C 7.5.6)
%&-line parsing enabled.
entering extended mode
LaTeX2e <2005/12/01>
Babel <v3.8h> and hyphenation patterns for english, usenglishmax, dumylang, noh
yphenation, arabic, basque, bulgarian, coptic, welsh, czech, slovak, german, ng
erman, danish, esperanto, spanish, catalan, galician, estonian, farsi, finnish,
french, greek, monogreek, ancientgreek, croatian, hungarian, interlingua, ibyc
us, indonesian, icelandic, italian, latin, mongolian, dutch, norsk, polish, por
tuguese, pinyin, romanian, russian, slovenian, uppersorbian, serbian, swedish,
turkish, ukenglish, ukrainian, loaded.

! I can't find file `*.tex'.
<*> \scrollmode\input *.tex

Please type another input file name:
! Emergency stop.
<*> \scrollmode\input *.tex

No pages of output.
Transcript written on texput.log.
mv: when moving multiple files, last argument must be a directory
Try `mv --help' for more information.


Please correct my script to get the desired output. My cron script is:

*/2 * * * * /bin/sh /data/jay/batch/batchtx > /data/jay/batch/batchtx.log 2>&1

Please help.

...Jay

[jozyba]

The error message says that latex can't find your tex files.

At the beginning of your script cd to the directory that you want to work in:

cd /full/path/to/tex/files

[jay2708]

It is working fine now. Thanks for your support.

...Jay