Problem with simple cron jobs

[oldudu]

Hi everybody,

In order to keep my money, I've changed for a low cost Internet Provider (Erevia) to connect via ISDN (because I can't get ADSL before next century).
This provider may let me staying connected 12 hours per 12 hours (i.e. from 7am to 7pm with 1 login/pwd and from 7 pm to 7 am with another login/pwd).
If I stay connected with the bad login I'm charged.

I have 2 ISDN routers but none of them can get 2 kind of connection differentiated by the time.
So I wonder if, with the help of Crond, I can connect via router #1 (with a fixed IP address) if time is between 7 am and 7pm and via router #2 (with another IP address) if time is between 7pm and 7am. I also need to disconnect @ 6:59am an reconnect @7:01.

I get WL500g with the nice Oleg FW 1.9.2.7-3c and it works really nice.

Thank you very much for your help !

Regards

Oldudu

[kamilek]

I have problem with crond. When I define very simple command to run in crontabs like this:

30 * * * * mkdir /tmp/harddisk/a

is it ok but when I define something like this:

30 1 * * * mkdir /tmp/harddisk/a

the command is not run. I tried also 30 01 .............. with the same result.
The commands on lines 3 - 6 aren't working (see attachment).

Where is problem?

I´m using Asus WL500b, last Oleg's FW and crond which is in busybox which is downloaded form Direct Downloads from here.
And some interesting thing : my crontab file must be named admin not root. With name root it isn't working at all.

[tomilius]

I don't know much about cron, but I can give you these suggestions: check the syslog; check some guides on Google.

[kamilek]

There is no problem in syslog, and the commands are maybe good. Controled with linux.about.com and others www Linux pages.

[Styno]

There's a howto about cron in the HOWTO section...But perhaps that doesn't solve your problem....anyway, check it out.

[Oleg]

I have problem with crond. When I define very simple command to run in crontabs like this:

is it ok but when I define something like this:

the command is not run. I tried also 30 01 .............. with the same result.
The commands on lines 3 - 6 aren't working (see attachment).

Where is problem?

I´m using Asus WL500b, last Oleg's FW and crond which is in busybox which is downloaded form Direct Downloads from here.
And some interesting thing : my crontab file must be named admin not root. With name root it isn't working at all.

crond is already included in the firmware, so try with built one.

[kamilek]

So the problem is solved! Crond from Oleg's FW is working without problems,but Cron from Download section has some problem with time. It "thinks" that the time is for example not 20:00 but 18:00. So the commands were done with 2 hours delay!

[barsju]

I have had a similar problem with awk. When ever I run a date command or a script containing a date command from command line I get UTC time, and not my timezone. If however the same script is started by crond the time is correct. Strange...

If I run the date applet from full busybox I get:
Tue Apr 12 06:25:51 UTC 2005
The built in date however shows:
Tue Apr 12 08:25:58 METDST 2005

Not a big problem, but is there a way to make full busybox show local time?

S.

[Oleg]

unslung contains busybox package - I hope it's "full". Try using it (you could just try to extract binary from the ipk).

[Muffe]

I want to execute a simple cron job every minute. My /var/spool/cron/crontabs/admin contains this line:

* * * * * /tmp/harddisk/bin/camsrv -r VGA -f /tmp/harddisk/tmp/display.jpg -D /dev/video

My post-boot script contains this line:

crontab /var/spool/cron/crontabs/admin

But it does not start. The command will not execute. I can't even get cron started manually. Can comeone help me?

I use Olegs 1.9.2.7-5a firmware.

Thanks.

[RoofCat]

I want to execute a simple cron job every minute. My /var/spool/cron/crontabs/admin contains this line:

* * * * * /tmp/harddisk/bin/camsrv -r VGA -f /tmp/harddisk/tmp/display.jpg -D /dev/video

My post-boot script contains this line:

crontab /var/spool/cron/crontabs/admin

But it does not start. The command will not execute. I can't even get cron started manually. Can comeone help me?
I use Olegs 1.9.2.7-5a firmware.
Thanks.

In post-mount it should be

/usr/sbin/crond

Crontab program is only used for manipulating cron schedules, cron itself is crond.

HTH,
Roofcat

[barsju]

And make sure to add /var/spool/cron/crontabs/admin to /usr/local/.files

S.

PS: Did you see the howto? http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?t=1058

[Muffe]

Thanks, RoofCat. I have changed the line in the post-mount file, and that did the trick.

Barsju: Yes, I followed the HOWTO, but it seemes like it containes an error. You wrote this:

echo "crontab" >> /usr/local/sbin/post-boot

. This did not work for me, and I changed this line into /usr/sbin/crond and it worked. I use the 1.9.2.7-5a firmware.

[barsju]

Right you are. Sorry for that. I should test my scripts before writing howto's..

Anyways, thanx for headsup. I fixed the howto now so others shouldn't get same problem..

S.

[Joe]

Hi,

i have read the tutorial about installing cron with 1.9* firmware. But to do this I need USB-HDD or similar. But i haven't one.
First point in the turorial is installing cron with ipkg. why i have to install cron again? there is a crond and crontab on my wl500g.

but there is always this errormessage:
crontab: cannot change dir to /var/spool/cron/crontabs: No such file or directory
when i want to start crontab.

what's the problem now? need i usb hdd for using cron? are'nt there other ways.

greeting joe