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Date: Tue, 23 May 2023 15:44:42 -0600
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Subject: Re: cron: trying and totally failing to run a simple cron job
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From: Brian Inglis via Cygwin <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
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Cc: Brian Inglis <Brian DOT Inglis AT Shaw DOT ca>, Jonathan Clark <jonathan AT att DOT net>
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On 2023-05-23 13:46, Jonathan Clark via Cygwin wrote:
> First off, many thanks to everyone who is putting in time and effort in making 
> cygwin as wonderful as it is.
> 
> I'm trying to get what I think is a simple cron job working. So far all I've 
> gotten is frustrated and confused. I'm sure I'm doing something stupid (probably 
> more than one thing), but I don't know what. At this point I have tried many 
> different twiddles and fiddles and so on, with no positive results. Any help 
> gratefully accepted.
> 
> I am familiar with cron and crontabs on various flavours of UNIX, but this is my 
> first attempt at getting a cron job working on cygwin.
> 
> I have DLed the cron package and gotten it running (possibly wrongly...).
> 
> There are no cron.allow nor cron.deny files that I can find.
> 
> I have set up a crontab which looks correct to me. I have tried many variants of 
> the actual command - adding a specific shell invocation (having read somewhere 
> that this needs to be a .exe file). The target script works just fine when 
> invoked by hand. I have ensured that the crontab file is written in UNIX format. 
> I have messed around with file permissions so that the target script is not 
> writable, even by me.
> 
> However, nothing works. Either:
> 
> a) nothing is ever invoked - cronevents shows that the new crontab is loaded, 
> but there's nothing there which shows that the specified command is ever run;
> 
> OR
> 
> b) I get a gnomic message about the crontab being UNSAFE.
> 
> I have a sneaking suspicion that the space in my Windows username may be the 
> cause of the UNSAFE.
> 
> Along the way I have fallen over various other curiosities.
> 
> 'crontab -u' just says "must be privileged", even though I'm running it from an 
> Administrator account.
> 
> cron-config talks about using 'passwd -R'  as an option, but when I try this all 
> I get is:
> "Storing password failed: Function not implemented" which is unhelpful.
> 
> Apart from exhaustive search, there doesn't seem to be any way to search the 
> cygwin mailing list archives - is there such a facility hidden somewhere?
> 
> Any help appreciated! cronbug.txt attached

Hi JC,

You do not appear to be running cron!

Did you set up by running `/usr/sbin/cron-config` from an elevated admin shell 
and starting with the default answers?

I would avoid trying `crontab -u USER` under Cygwin as ideas of admin don't match.

I or config script created empty /var/cron/cron.deny to allow all users (me) to 
use cron.

I started off using `crontab -e` and `crontab -l > ~/$USER.crontab` to update 
and save, but now just edit ~/$USER.crontab then `crontab ~/$USER.crontab` to 
reload.

In my crontab I set:

PATH=/usr/local/bin:/home/$LOGNAME/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:$PATH
MAILTO=...@...

and never try running anything but non-elevated Cygwin scripts and commands.

I also run cygserver, and syslog-ng with some tweaks, to avoid dealing with 
Windows event logs.

[To run elevated Cygwin or Windows scripts and commands, I use Windows Scheduled 
Tasks with the SYSTEM account, whether logged in or not, with highest 
privileges, running Windows %CYGWIN_ROOT%\bin\sh ... with script args or any 
other command, making no assumptions about any current directory or user mounts.]

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis              Calgary, Alberta, Canada

La perfection est atteinte                   Perfection is achieved
non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter  not when there is no more to add
mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer     but when there is no more to cut
                                 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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