CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxcronscheduling
zlenyk
zlenyk

Reputation: 1010

Crontab - simple echo not running

I've got such situation: I want to schedule a job with crontab on a linux server. I'm not super-user, so I'm editing (with crontab -l, editor vim) only my crontab file. For testing, I put there:

* * * * * echo asdf

And the job is not running. Is the restart of the server needed? Or maybe some administrator move?

Upvotes: 39

Views: 73741

Answers (3)

Alex
Alex

Reputation: 488

If you want to echo something on your shell you could use wall:

* * * * * echo "Hello from cron" | wall

It will send your message to all users currently connected to your machine, including you obviously.

Upvotes: 8

Alexander El-kady
Alexander El-kady

Reputation: 19

For me * * * * * /bin/echo text > file is not working...I don't know why, previleges and everything is set. (This command is running normaly when I execute it as the particular root user, just to clarify this.) This can be solved by injecting the path PATH=$PATH:/bin in my example.

Instead * * * * * echo text > file is working fine, probably path issue.

Hope I helped

Upvotes: 1

Kedar Parikh
Kedar Parikh

Reputation: 1271

May be it is, cron jobs will run in their own shell. So you can't expect to see asdf on your console.

What you should try is 

* * * * * echo asdf > somefile_in_your_home_directory_with_complete_path.log

Next check the file by doing a tail:

tail -f somefile_in_your_home_directory_with_complete_path.log

And if it's not, check if the cron daemon itself is running or is down:

# pgrep crond

OR

# service crond status

Upvotes: 55

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