[SOLVED] One entry in crontab gets 60 messages (one per second)

JinxsDad · 01-06-2024, 07:01 AM

This is something I've never seen. Cron did send email this morning for my crontab entry for today ... 60 of them, to be exact. One per second while still 0200.

Is this another quirk with the crond that Slackware uses?

Thanks

RandomTroll · 01-06-2024, 08:21 AM

I've never had this behavior, and I use crond every day. The job you scheduled ran once every second that minute.

henca · 01-06-2024, 08:43 AM

Most likely it is not crond that is sending mails every second, crond can only run things once every minute. During the years, I have seen bugs causing crond to fork multiple crond processes. However, I do not think that you have 60 crond processes running. My guess is that you from cron have started something that is sending a lot o emails.

What does your entry in crontab look like that is causing all those mails?

regards Henrik

RandomTroll · 01-06-2024, 11:23 PM

I configure crond to log everything in /var/log/cron. If you have yours configured for logging you can check.

_peter · 01-07-2024, 01:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JinxsDad

This is something I've never seen. Cron did send email this morning for my crontab entry for today ... 60 of them, to be exact. One per second while still 0200.

Is this another quirk with the crond that Slackware uses?

Thanks

Hi, no offense, this less than obscure, not even sharing your /var/spool/cron/crontabs/* .
Cron works out of the box on Slackware.

It is likely - umask 0200 - still makes the cron tasks executable for the user involved.

JinxsDad · 01-07-2024, 07:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by henca

Most likely it is not crond that is sending mails every second, crond can only run things once every minute. During the years, I have seen bugs causing crond to fork multiple crond processes. However, I do not think that you have 60 crond processes running. My guess is that you from cron have started something that is sending a lot o emails.

What does your entry in crontab look like that is causing all those mails?

regards Henrik

# Run calendar -a at 0200
* 2 * * * /usr/bin/calendar -a
#

Looks right to me, unless there's yet another typo somewhere (like the missing * before).

Petri Kaukasoina · 01-07-2024, 07:41 AM

You have a '*' in the minute field. That means run at any minute, at 0200, 0201, 0202, ... , 0259.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JinxsDad

# Run calendar -a at 0200
* 2 * * * /usr/bin/calendar -a

To run only at 0200, any day, any month, any day of the week, you want

Code:

# MIN HOUR DAY MONTH DAYOFWEEK  COMMAND
0 2 * * * /usr/bin/calendar -a

JinxsDad · 01-07-2024, 07:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Petri Kaukasoina

You have a '*' in the minute field. That means run at 0200, 0201, 0202, ... , 0259.

To run only at 0200, any day, any month, any day of the week, you want

Code:

# MIN HOUR DAY MONTH DAYOFWEEK  COMMAND
0 2 * * * /usr/bin/calendar -a

Fixed. Thanks.

henca · 01-07-2024, 02:08 PM

So, your original cron job were configured to run every minute betweeen 02:00 and 02:59. Once fixed to only run at 02:00, did that fix your problem? Did you really get one mail every second, or where you confused by the mails sent every minute during that hour?

regards Henrik

JinxsDad · 01-07-2024, 02:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by henca

So, your original cron job were configured to run every minute between 02:00 and 02:59. Once fixed to only run at 02:00, did that fix your problem? Did you really get one mail every second, or where you confused by the mails sent every minute during that hour?

regards Henrik

Apparently I was confused by the number sent during that hour. This was first thing in the morning, pre-caffiene (it was still "brewing" in my French Press (I've had too many automatic drip coffee makers die ... a French press doesn't die).

Thanks