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INTERACTIVE AGENCY
run-parts
Debian has some handy directories for dropping scripts into regular cron rotation, /etc/cron.hourly/, /etc/cron.daily/, /etc/cron.weekly/ and /etc/cron.monthly/.
I spent a long time wondering (but never really looking) into why certain update scripts I had in there weren’t running. Turns out these scripts are called via “run-parts”, and, well, turns out it’s my stupid fault for not reading the manpage, which makes it pretty clear:
RUN-PARTS(8):
run-parts runs a number of scripts or programs found in a
single directory directory. Filenames should consist
entirely of upper and lower case letters, digits, under
scores, and hyphens. Subdirectories of directory and
files with other names will be silently ignored.
My script’s name? “check-apt.sh”, which puts it into the “silently ignored” category. Lesson learned — always read the man pages, kids.
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[...] e notification script Filed under: Linux/BSD — Chris @ 9:26 pm I realized I mentioned this script previously, but never got around to actually posting it. This is a hand [...]
I had the exact same problem running on Fedora Core 2. I spent hours researching the issue and found that you can test the files in the folders by entrering:
run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
When I did this, I got the following message:
“: bad interpreter: No such file or directory: /bin/sh”
I knew that the first line of my script named “check_mail.cron”, which was located in the /etc/cron.hourly folder, was “#!/bin/sh”. I removed this line from my script and then cron (or run-parts) was able to process it without any problem.