cannot start cron; FIFO exists

deverest · 02-17-2005, 03:33 PM

i am running solaris 5.7 on X86 platform, when I try to start cron, I get the error:

cannot start cron; FIFO exists
CRON aborted

Any Ideas?
I am not getitng backups while cron is down.

Thanks

jlliagre · 02-17-2005, 03:48 PM

Have you checked cron isn't already running ?

deverest · 02-17-2005, 04:27 PM

cron is running, but i receive the same error (cannot start cron; FIFO exists) when issuing the stop command.

jlliagre · 02-18-2005, 01:19 AM

What stop command ?
cron is designed to be started once and run "forever".

deverest · 02-18-2005, 04:42 AM

I was runing /usr/sbin/crond stop

I igurd out the issue....i swapped out a box a week ago and a script in cron has been attempting to call this server every 30 min, the result, cron was busy calling a non-existent host and ignoring other tasks, such as my backups.

thanks for all the help.

jlliagre · 02-18-2005, 06:57 AM

There's no /usr/sbin/crond command, I think you mean /usr/sbin/cron.
Anyway cron takes no argument (stop or other).

deverest · 02-18-2005, 07:12 AM

good to know....so there is no way to restart cron after it has been started? can cron be killed using the pid?

jlliagre · 02-18-2005, 07:19 AM

There's never a need to restart cron, as it is build to run forever and it has no bugs

If you need to have cron rereading its configuration files, use the contab command (e.g.: "crontab -e").

deverest · 02-18-2005, 07:27 AM

Thanks.....that command (crontab -e) hangs, i need to coment out an entry but the display hangs and i end up killing the session...big problems

jlliagre · 02-18-2005, 08:29 AM

What do you mean by hangs ?
You should first read man pages and not blindly enter commands suggested by people you do not know ...

Well, I think your EDITOR variable is not set, so "crontab -e" brings you in the good old 'ed' editor which is not a user friendlyness model.

Try:
export EDITOR=vi
and start again.

deverest · 02-18-2005, 08:38 AM

when i type crontab -e, nothing comes up. on my other servers i am able to edit the cron file, but i get nothing here, just black screen, after a few moments , i need to ctrl c to get a command prompt back.

my default editor is already vi

jlliagre · 02-18-2005, 10:10 AM

Try

Code:

truss -f crontab -e

to see where it hangs

(=AA=) · 10-10-2005, 07:17 AM

I am having the same problem.
Cron has for some reason stopped running.

crontab -l displays the cronjobs.
crontab -e causes it to hang.

Code:

# crontab -e                
1843

I then have to hit CTRL-D to exit and get the following message when I do.
"The crontab file was not changed."

weird ?

(=AA=) · 10-10-2005, 07:28 AM

ok... truss -f just spat out a ton of info but nothing that means a whole lot to me ?

It ends like this

Code:

11387:  write(3, " v / n u l l   2 > & 1\0".., 512)     = 512
11387:  read(4, 0x0002B668, 2048)                       = 0
11387:  close(4)                                        = 0
1843
11387:  write(1, " 1 8 4 3\n", 5)                       = 5
11383:  waitid(P_PID, 11385, 0xFFBFF5D8, WEXITED|WTRAPPED|_WNOCHLD) (sleeping...)
11385:  waitid(P_PID, 11387, 0xFFBFFAF0, WEXITED|WTRAPPED|WNOWAIT) (sleeping...)
11387:  read(0, 0xFFBFFBF7, 1)          (sleeping...)

jlliagre · 10-10-2005, 10:49 AM

Read again my previous answers, there is no problem with your "crontab -e" output.