Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 17:23:00 -0600 From: Jahanur R Subedar <jahanur@jjsoft.com> To: Dan Mahoney <dan@wolf.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: [Fwd: Cron <root@runner> /usr/sbin/ntpdate chimer.unt.edu www.mit.edu ftp.cdrom.com >/dev/null] Message-ID: <364B6DD3.56008A1C@jjsoft.com> References: <3649DA43.B0A3FEF@jjsoft.com> <19981111111016.A19974@wolf.com> <3649E4C6.106C8E03@jjsoft.com> <19981111113852.C19974@wolf.com> <364A1EFB.60AE2047@jjsoft.com> <19981111160305.D4471@wolf.com> <364A2D45.A1CF630B@jjsoft.com> <19981111170953.B9551@wolf.com> <364A3E2A.56C8BA8B@jjsoft.com> <19981112084959.A22609@wolf.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
No I did not get anymore messages like that. Yes you helped me a lot. I thank you very much for your time to write all those responses. I really appreciate that. I have no other words. Jahanur Dan Mahoney wrote: > > Thank you for the correction. > > I found the answer. It was actually in the file /etc/crontab and I don't know why > > it is there. > > I did not do anything to line. It reads. > > 0 0-23/6 * * * root /usr/sbin/ntpdate chimer.unt.edu > > www.mit.edu ft > > p.cdrom.com >/dev/null > > > > Can you tell me what does it mean. > > Does this >/dev/null mean do not display message to any ttys. > > How it is e-mailing the out come to root. > > Can you tell me why the crontab file is in /etc/crontab directory. But not in the > > daily weekly monthly files ( by the wya these files exists). > > > > I tested the each of the servers its working fine. > > Doh! I forgot all about /etc/crontab - that's one of the problems with > having so many sources of commands for cron to run! Having it in > /etc/crontab is ok, too. THe way the command is being invoked, it > would have made sense to put it in either /etc/crontab or /etc/daily. > > The >/dev/null means to silently discard the normal program output. > This will prevent the root mailbox from getting cluttered up with > messages reporting successful completion of the command. Since it > is getting executed every 6 hours, it would normally be sending you > 4 messages a day. By redirecting the output to /dev/null you will > only receive message from the process when an error occurs. By the > way, programs that normally write output to a tty will behave a > little differently when invoked from crontab - the output that > would normally go to the tty (that is, the stdout stream) will be > e-mailed to the user under whose name it is being invoked - in this > case, root. > > Have you been getting any more of those error messages? If so, then > you might want to either comment that line out of /etc/crontab or > modify it to use fewer sync servers. > > I hope that helps. > > Dan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?364B6DD3.56008A1C>