anacron script in cron.daily not running via symlink - linux

What can I do to make this script run daily?
If I manually run the script, it works. I can see that it did what it's supposed to do. (backup files) However, it will not run as a cron.daily script. I've let it go for days without touching it -- and it never runs.
The actual script is here /var/www/myapp/backup.sh
There is a symlink to it here /etc/cron.daily/myapp_backup.sh -> /var/www/myapp/backup.sh
The cron log at /var/log/cron shows anacron running this script:
Aug 19 03:09:01 ip-123-456-78-90 anacron[31537]: Job `cron.daily' started
Aug 19 03:09:01 ip-123-456-78-90 run-parts(/etc/cron.daily)[31545]: starting myapp_backup.sh
Aug 19 03:09:01 ip-123-456-78-90 run-parts(/etc/cron.daily)[31559]: finished myapp_backup.sh
Yet there is no evidence that the script actually did anything.
Here is the security info on these files:
ls -la /var/cron.daily
<snip>
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Aug 12 21:18 myapp_backup.sh -> /var/www/myapp/backup.sh
</snip>
ls -la /var/www/myapp
<snip>
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 13 13:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 Jul 12 01:00 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 407 Aug 12 23:37 backup.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 33 Aug 12 21:13 list.txt
</snip>
The file called list.txt is used by backup.sh.
The script just runs tar to create an archive.

From the cron manpage of a debian/ubuntu system:
the files under these directories have to be pass some sanity checks including the following: be executable, be owned by root, not be writable by group or other and, if symlinks, point to files owned by root. Additionally, the file names must conform to the filename requirements of run-parts: they must be entirely made up of letters, digits and can only contain the special signs underscores ('_') and hyphens ('-'). Any file that does not conform to these requirements will not be executed by run-parts. For example, any file containing dots will be ignored.
So:
file need to be owned by root
if symlink, the source file need to be owned by root
if symlink, the link name should NOT contain dots

I had a similar situation with cron.hourly and awstats processing.
I THINK it is related to SELinux and anacron not having the same powers/permissions as cron.
The ACTUAL solution defeated me (so far).
MY WORKAROUND SOLUTION: Run the job via root's cron entries (crontab -e ) and simply schedule it hourly.

Related

Change directory using relative path

When I open terminal, my working directory is a/b/c/
and my shell script is placed under a/b/d/e/f/ which gets triggered through Autosys.
I want to change my working directory from a/b/c/ to a/b/d/e/f/ using relative path.
Currently I'm hard coding cd a/b/d/e/f/. I don't want to do it anymore. Could you please let me know how can this be achieved.
cd ../d/e/f/
The trick being the .. which is the "parent directory" of the one you're in
You can see a reference to it (including its permissions) if you use ls -a or more completely
$ ls -lhaF
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 20 user group xxB Jun 15 00:00 ./
drwxr-xr-x 3 user group xxB Jun 15 00:00 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group xxB Jun 15 00:00 e/

Cron files /etc/at.allow and /etc/cron.allow files, root permission abnormal behaviour?

In my open vpn server, i am ensuring cron file permission to be only accessable from root user.
I have removed the at.deny and cron.deny files and have created at.allow and cron.allow and 0600 permissions are applied for files, both files are empty and file permissions are as below, which clearly says root has read and write access.
-rw------- 1 root root 0 Jul 21 08:40 cron.allow
-rw------- 1 root root 0 Jul 21 08:40 at.allow
however this change allows my openvpnas user to still list the crontab and even allows to edit cron.
openvpnas#openvpnas2:~$ crontab -l
no crontab for openvpnas
Where as when the file permissions are as below,
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jul 21 08:41 cron.allow
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jul 21 08:41 at.allow
It restricts my non root users to access or edit cron files! This issue is only with one of my server, where as other server permissions and behaviours are as expected,
openvpnas#openvpnas2:~$ crontab -l
You (openvpnas) are not allowed to use this program (crontab)
See crontab(1) for more information
Please provide your inputs on this, this has kept me blocked from continuing my work.
This issue i faced was in Ubuntu 18.04 instance,
Current /usr/bin/crontab permission was as below,
-rwxr-sr-x 1 root crontab 39352 Nov 16 2017 /usr/bin/crontab
Had to change the group user from crontab to root and file permission to as below,
sudo chmod 4755 /usr/bin/crontab
sudo chown root:root /usr/bin/crontab
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 39352 Nov 16 2017 /usr/bin/crontab
This permission restricts the non-root user to schedule cronjobs. The access can be allowed to non-root users by adding the user names in cron.allow file.
openvpnas#openvpnas2:~$ crontab -l
You (openvpnas) are not allowed to use this program (crontab)
See crontab(1) for more information

Script that calls another script to execute on every file in a directory

There are two directories that contains these files:
First one /usr/local/nagios/etc/hosts
[root#localhost hosts]$ ll
total 12
-rw-rw-r-- 1 apache nagios 1236 Feb 7 10:10 10.80.12.53.cfg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 apache nagios 1064 Feb 27 22:47 10.80.12.62.cfg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 apache nagios 1063 Feb 22 12:02 localhost.cfg
And the second one /usr/local/nagios/etc/services
[root#localhost services]$ ll
total 20
-rw-rw-r-- 1 apache nagios 2183 Feb 27 22:48 10.80.12.62.cfg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 apache nagios 1339 Feb 13 10:47 Check usage _etc.cfg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 apache nagios 7874 Feb 22 11:59 localhost.cfg
And I have a script that goes through file in Hosts directory and paste some lines from that file in the file in the Services directory.
The script is ran like this:
./nagios-contacts.sh /usr/local/nagios/etc/hosts/10.80.12.62.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/services/10.80.12.62.cfg
How can I achieve that another script calls my script and goes through every file in the Hosts directory and does its job for the files with the same name in the Service directory?
In my script I´m pulling out contacts from the 10.80.12.62.cfg in the Hosts directory and appending them to the file with the same name in the Service directory.
Don't use ls output as an input to for loop instead use the built-in wild-cards. See why it's not a good idea.
for f in /usr/local/nagios/etc/hosts/*.cfg
do
basef=$(basename "$f")
./nagios-contacts.sh "$f" "/usr/local/nagios/etc/services/${basef}"
done
It sounds like you just need to do some iteration.
echo $(pwd)
for file in $(ls); do ./nagious-contacts.sh $file; done;
So it will loop over all files in the current directory.
You can also modify it as well by doing something more absolute.
abspath=$1
for file in $(ls $abspath); do ./nagious-contacts.sh $abspath/$file; done
which would loop over all files in a set directory, and then pass the abspath/filename into your script.

Crontab isn't running

My crontab isn't running and I'm trying to figure out why. I've created a symbolic link within /etc/cron.d to /var/www/mysite.crontab
user#ip-xxxxxxxxxx:/etc/cron.d$ ll
total 20
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 11 03:48 ./
drwxr-xr-x 96 root root 4096 Apr 16 00:50 ../
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 Apr 11 03:47 mysite.crontab -> /var/www/mysite.crontab
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 124 Feb 27 2012 drupal7
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 544 Sep 12 2012 php5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 102 Apr 2 2012 .placeholder
The actual cron file is...
#Purge old deals
4 1 * * * www-data wget -q -O- http://www.mysite.com/cron/clean > /dev/null 2>&1;
Oddly enough the problem is with the name of the file. You are not permitted to use a . as a part of the name of the file when present in the /etc/cron.d dirctory.
The logic for this is in the database.c file, in the function valid_name. Renaming the file to something like mysite_crontab should fix the issue.
In general, the filename should probably just be a simple name mysite the fact that it's in this directory implies that it's a cron file already.
The file that is being pointed to must be owned by root, this is stated in the man page for the support of the /etc/cron.d directory:
Support for /etc/cron.d is included in the cron daemon itself, which handles this location as the system-wide crontab spool. This directory can contain any file defining tasks following the format used in /etc/crontab, i.e. unlike the user cron spool, these files must provide the username to run the task as in the task definition.
Files in this directory have to be owned by root, do not need to be executable (they are configuration files, just like /etc/crontab) and must conform to the same naming convention as used by run-parts(8): they must consist solely of upper- and lower-case letters, digits, underscores, and hyphens. This means that they cannot contain any dots. If the -l option is specified to cron (this option can be setup through /etc/default/cron, see below), then they must conform to the LSB namespace specification, exactly as in the --lsbsysinit option in run-parts.
The intended purpose of this feature is to allow packages that require finer control of their scheduling than the /etc/cron.{hourly,daily,weekly,monthly} directories to add a crontab file to /etc/cron.d. Such files should be named after the package that supplies them.

cron job not started daily

I have a script in /etc/cron.daily/backup.sh file is allowed to execute and run but do not start happening, I read the manual and used the search but not mastered decision.
ls -l /etc/cron.daily/
total 52
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8686 2009-04-17 10:27 apt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 314 2009-02-10 19:45 aptitude
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 103 2011-05-22 19:08 backup.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 502 2008-11-05 03:43 bsdmainutils
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 89 2009-01-27 00:55 logrotate
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 954 2009-03-19 16:17 man-db
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 646 2008-11-05 03:37 mlocate
The cron job filename can't have a period in it on certain ubuntus. See this. Particularly, this quote within:
Although the directories contain periods in their names, run-parts
will not accept a file name containing a period and will fail silently
when encountering them
Properly, this is a problem with run-parts, which the ubuntu cron runs, and not with cron itself. Still, it's what bit me.
pls check:
1a) is the script executable and has correct owner/group settings?
1b) does it start with the correct #! line? and do you specify the full path to the shell you're using,
e.g. #!/bin/bash ?
2) does the script generate an error while being executed?
e.g. can you write to a log file from it, and do you see the log messages?
also: check in the email inbox of the user who owns the crontab -- errors are emailed to the user / e.g. root
what does the output of ls -l /etc/cron.daily/ look like? can you post that?
NOTE:
you can always create a crontab entry for this yourself, outside of those cron.xxx directory structure ;-)
See: man 5 crontab
10 1 * * * /somewhere/backup.sh >> /somewhere/backup.log 2>&1
this has the advantage that you get to pick the exact time when it runs (e.g. 1:10am here), and you can redirect STRERR and STDOUT to append to a log file for that particular script
For testing purposes you could run it ever 10 minutes, like this:
0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /somewhere/backup.sh >> /somewhere/backup.log 2>&1
do touch /somewhere/backup.log to make sure it exists

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