Ubuntu
cron package

Back in time not being run by cron

Asked by rob_brown-bayliss

Hi,

I have installed back in time ( http://backintime.le-web.org/ ) and set it up. It creates a crontab entry for the user to schedule backups. The crontab looks like this:

# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE - edit the master and reinstall.
# (- installed on Thu May 13 18:56:13 2010)
# (Cron version -- $Id: crontab.c,v 2.13 1994/01/17 03:20:37 vixie Exp $)
@daily nice -n 19 /usr/bin/backintime --backup-job >/dev/null 2>&1

I have tried it as a generic user, and as root. But it does not do daily backups.

Currently I have it set up as root doing hte backups.

If I "sudo su root" and then run the command "nice -n 19 /usr/bin/backintime --backup-job" it works. But if I just do "sudo nice -n 19 /usr/bin/backintime --backup-job " it fails saying "WARNING: Can't find snapshots folder !"

In syslog I have these lines:
May 15 08:23:57 black-tower anacron[1363]: Will run job `cron.daily' in 5 min.
May 15 08:23:57 black-tower anacron[1363]: Jobs will be executed sequentially
May 15 08:28:53 black-tower anacron[1363]: Job `cron.daily' started
May 15 08:28:53 black-tower anacron[1726]: Updated timestamp for job `cron.daily' to 2010-05-15

I would have expected root's cron jobs to be run as root? So what else could be causing it to fail? Is root's crontab even being processed?

Running Lucid 64 bit.

Thanks.

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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

Please put your contab jobs in the root user crontab so type:

sudo crontab -e -u root

and put the command in it you can use online utility to put the crontab row: i.e. http://cron.nmonitoring.com/cron-generator.html

Hope this helps

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rob_brown-bayliss (r-brown-bayliss-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#2

Hi Marco. The crontab listed above is roots' crontab.

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rob_brown-bayliss (r-brown-bayliss-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#3

It looks like anacron is not running the users crontab. When the PC is left on over night it runs, but other wise when it starts up in the morning anacron runs the scripts in /etc/cron.daily but the commands in the root users crontab.

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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#4

Please check/edit the /etc/anacrontab file

Hth

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