Leopard user crontab!

[Zimbop]

Where did they move the leopard user crontab?!

I just can't find it

 

[Zimbop]

found it...

/usr/lib/cron/tabs

 

[Whitehill]

Well, this is a surprise. I upgraded from 10.4.11 (server) to 10.5 and then 10.5.1. I have tabs in /var/cron/tabs and duplicates in /usr/lib/cron/tabs, really /var/at/tabs. OK, now I know where things are. But ...

cron is running jobs only for me (the administrator) and is ignoring other users. And, yes, the files at.deny and cron.deny in /var/at are empty.

Any ideas how to make cron behave?

 

[Giaguara]

How to make cron behave? Know what you are doing when you touch it...
(and even then, don't touch it)

 

[Whitehill]

Would you suggest an alternative?

 

[Giaguara]

Depends on what you need to achieve.

 

[Whitehill]

Call fetchmail every few minutes.
Invoke backups daily, weekly, monthly.
That kind of stuff.

 

[Giaguara]

Hm, then cron ...
Or OnyX allows you to add stuff to periodic if I remember correctly. (and run it anytime)

 

[Whitehill]

It took me most of the day to research how this works. The ultimate daemon is launchd which runs cron and at periodically. That said, I still can't explain why jobs for some users get run, for others they get ignored.

 

[Whitehill]

I have eliminated a lot of the clutter from the console log. The following may have something to do with my cron problems:

11/29/07 5:40:00 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x1121b0.cron[8270]) Could not setup Mach task special port 9: (os/kern) no access 
11/29/07 5:40:00 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x110b30.cron[8271]) Could not setup Mach task special port 9: (os/kern) no access

Anyone know what this means?

 

[Whitehill]

I got rid of the log entries. First, remove this line from user whitehill's crontab:

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/some_program param1 param2

That is, run the program every 5 minutes every day.

Now, create the file /Library/LaunchAgents/net.home.some.whitehill.plist with contents

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>net.home.some.whitehill</string>
        <key>UserName</key>
        <string>whitehill</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/usr/bin/some_program</string>
                <string>param1</string>
                <string>param2</string>
        </array>
        <key>StartInterval</key>
        <integer>300</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

Then run

launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/net.home.some.whitehill.plist

Wow! Isn't that so much simpler and easier?

 

[mitchenall]

i'm getting the same thing... would love to know what's causing it.