Jim Perrin wrote: > On 3/23/07, Mário Gamito <gamito at gmail.com> wrote: >> Hi, >> >> Can anoyone tell me why this command is not executed (or it is without >> success) from crontab, but works perfectly from the command line ? >> (yes, i've restarted crontab service) >> > It works from the command line? that's kind of surprising. It may work > via tab completion in the shell, but will not work with that as typed. > You'd suffer from shell expansion. ?? >> >> # clean up postmaster >> 00 30 * * * root /usr/bin/find >> /var/qmail/maildirs/postmaster at telbit.pt/Maildir/new -type f -print0 | >> xargs -0 -n 50 rm > > You very likely need to escape the @ as the shell is probably trying > to do something with it. > It's true that, using tab-completion, the @ can get escaped, but I can't find that bash actually does anything with it in this context: [summer at bilby ~]$ mkdir /tmp/x at j [summer at bilby ~]$ mkdir /tmp/x\@j/ The second, I used tab-completion to expand from "/tmp/x." As you can see, it was used as typed. I would first, check the logs. I generally use the user's crontab, so crontab -e and ensure I have a line MAILTO=me at example.lan so I get the results mailed to me. It's good to set PATH too. I also have had bad experiences (one day I will complain to someone's bugzilla) with crond eating stuff. This does not work: 0 * * * * echo $(date) The workaround is to put the command(s) into a script. -- Cheers John -- spambait 1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu Z1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu Please do not reply off-list