Re: Weird Mail Message

[Steve <steve focb co nz>]

you may want to check your /etc/crontab file for consistency - although it 
sounds a little like the system crontab file has been used as a template 
for another crontab file that is running hourly

(from that crontab man page)
The format of a cron command is very much the V7 standard, with a number  
of upward-compatible extensions.  Each line has five time and date
fields, followed by a user name if this is  the  system  crontab file
(end quote)

The line you see below "root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly" is usually found 
in the system crontab file and allows the system to set the user that the 
command is run as.

you may want to check for this line in /var/spool/cron/* and see if that 
entry has accidently been replicated.

if it has then it may be that your system crontab file has had its 
location changed (recompile of cron ?) and set to call the system crontab 
file - in which case you will also get similar messages daily, weekly and 
monthly.

HTH.

-- 
Steve.

On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, L. Christopher Luther wrote:

> I know that there's been many posts regarding "weird" crond messages, but a
> quick search didn't show anything useful.  
> 
> I've two RH 8.0 systems that are almost completely identical from a package
> installation/configuration perspective.  However, on the one system I'm
> getting hourly mail messages that are being generated by crond, but the
> weird thing is that I don't have any files in /etc/cron.hourly.  Here is the
> message:  
> 
>    Message 1:
>    From root myserver  Mon Jan 19 19:01:01 2004
>    Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 19:01:00 -0500
>    From: root myserver (Cron Daemon)
>    To: root myserver
>    Subject: Cron <root myserver> root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
>    X-Cron-Env: <SHELL=/bin/bash>
>    X-Cron-Env: <PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin>
>    X-Cron-Env: <MAILTO=root>
>    X-Cron-Env: <HOME=/>
>    X-Cron-Env: <LOGNAME=root>
>    
>    /bin/bash: line 1: root: command not found
> 
> As this thing is being generated hourly, it's very quickly filling up my
> mailbox.  
> 
> Does anyone have any clues about this one?
> 
> 
> Sincerely,  
> 
> L. Christopher Luther  
> Technical Consultant  
> Xybernaut Solutions, Inc.  
> (703) 654-3642  
> cluther xybernaut com  
> http://www.xybernautsolutions.com  
> 
> PGP Public KeyID:  0x21261B88
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