cron does not execute script properly

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I have a simple script that checks for certain printers and records them to a file.
When I run the script manually at the command prompt, it works perfect, but when I run the script via cron, nothing happens. No errors reported, and no records are written out. I'm using Solaris 10. Below is the script:

#!/bin/ksh

DATE=`/usr/bin/date '+%d-%m-%y %T'`; export DATE
FILE=/usr/lbin/logs/disabled_printers.txt; export FILE

lpstat -p | grep 0609 | while read i_x i_ptr i_state i_since i_mon i_day i_time i_dash
do
/usr/bin/echo "$i_ptr $DATE `lpstat -o $i_ptr | wc -l` " >>
$FILE
done

Cronjobs for other scripts works fine, just this one. Please assist.

Thanks
Lucas

2

if a script executes from cli propperly and fails via cron it is ALWAYS the same old story.
check permissions and path variable.
test the following within your script

which lpstat > /tmp/cronlog

and check the output

3

Thanks for the answer, you're right, if I put absolute paths for command it works . But, is there something I can do to make it work even if I dont specify absolute paths of commands? Like set something in the . profiles?

4

cron invokes the command from the user's HOME directory with the shell, (/usr/bin/sh).
cron supplies a default environment for every shell, defining:
HOME=user's-home-directory
LOGNAME=user's-login-id
PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:.
SHELL=/usr/bin/sh

Users who desire to have their .profile executed must explicitly do so in the crontab entry or in a script called by the entry.

depending on you unx u can set Path Variable in crontab

# Shell variable for cron
SHELL=/bin/bash
# PATH variable for cron
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/bin/X11
#M S T M W Befehl

5

Thanks Demwz, with your recommendations I've fixed all other scripts on other servers.