at command fails

a329743 · October 4, 2006, 5:44am

hi,

all the user on my machine can't launch at job anymore.
they all got the message "error in message send" each time they launch something using the at command.

i tried to empty the job queue but the error message is still there.

What can I do ?

Thanks

RTM · October 5, 2006, 10:08am

Found with a simple search on the Internet:

From: Kenneth Herron <kherron@ms.uky.edu>
Subject: Re: at(1) command fails
Date: 10 Sep 92 19:25:38 GMT
To: info-unix@sem.brl.mil

sfs@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (salvatore.savastano) writes:

>I use the at(1) command to schedule up to about 1000 jobs at 1 minute intervals

>occasionally at(1) starts spitting out an extra message
>with each job scheduled and continues to do so until the end.
> ...
> at: error in message send
> job 716077800.a at Wed Sep 9 16:30:00 1992
> at: error in message send
> job 716077860.a at Wed Sep 9 16:31:00 1992
> at: error in message send

At and crontab use a FIFO to communicate with the cron daemon. Each
message is 26 bytes or more, depending on how a struct gets padded.
The "error in message send" message is printed if the write() into the
FIFO fails, suggesting that you're submitting enough jobs at once to
fill up the FIFO.

The cheap solution is not to submit so many jobs at once. However,
my guess is there's a simpler way to launch these processes without
queuing up so many at jobs.
--
Kenneth Herron kherron@ms.uky.edu
University of Kentucky +1 606 257 2975
Department of Mathematics "Thanks to the magic of the slow-motion
camera, we can now show you how ugly the inside of someone's mouth can be."

There may have simply been a change that someone made that is releasing more jobs than "at" can handle. Suggest you check all users "at" jobs to see who is running what, and check the scripts that they aren't spawning more "at" jobs constantly.