SYS CRONJOB just not running...

UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
1

I'm trying to run "SAR -i 60" under

#/var/spool/cron/crontabs/SYS

0,10,20,30,40,50 0-6 sh -c "/usr/lib/sa/sa1 60 10 &"
55 23 * 0-6 /usr/lib/sa/sa2 -i 900 -A

machine is not running above cron job under "sys" at all.

This suppose to run every minutes and all time in 24 hours. When day gets change it should produce new file under /var/adm/sa but it appears to be not doing what it suppose to do?

I have restart the cron so many times but it keep halting cron jobs.

How can I fix this issue?

Thanks

Adeel Asif
System Administrator
Easylink Services Intl. Corp

2

who is the owner of /var/adm/sa directory? with what permissions?

3

Normally I would expect these accounting crons to run as a root cron.
I can't see a cron running sensibly as "sys" because on most unix systems "sys" does not have a shell. A crontab for "sys" would be called "sys" not "SYS".
I have seen system accounting crons run as user "adm" before, and that account is usually listed in the cron.allow file .

There is more than one reason for your crons to fail. I may be easier to read up on the subject first, then have another go.

See the example format for system accounting crons in "man sa1" (which also covers "sa2").
Note carefully the number of space-delimited fields in each crontab line.

See "man crontab" for the format of a crontab file.

Beware that running "sa1" with an effective sample period of one minute will produce very large sa?? files which could fill the /var partition. I get 700 Kb a day from 20 mins intervals.

4

Here is the permission of sa directory

drwxrwxr-x 2 adm sys 512 Sep 1 09:38 sa

under crontab its "sys" not "SYS"

---------- Post updated at 01:31 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:27 PM ----------

here's the following sys crontab sample.

#ident "@(#)sys 1.5 92/07/14 SMI" /* SVr4.0 1.2 */
#
# The sys crontab should be used to do performance collection. See cron
# and performance manual pages for details on startup.
#
# 0 * * * 0-6 /usr/lib/sa/sa1
# 20,40 8-17 * * 1-5 /usr/lib/sa/sa1
# 5 18 * * 1-5 /usr/lib/sa/sa2 -s 8:00 -e 18:01 -i 1200 -A
0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * 0-6 sh -c "/usr/lib/sa/sa1 60 10 &"
55 23 * * 0-6 /usr/lib/sa/sa2 -i 900 -A

5

What OS? in HPUX sa1 is a script... what's in sa1 ? (will it set a DESTFILE etc...?)

6

Running SOLARIS 10...

7

There may be other issues, but this line:

Would be better as:

If the cron is running but failing the error messages should be in the mail file for the user "sys".