Subject: Re: cron stops?
To: None <netbsd-users@netbsd.org>
From: Bruce Anderson <brucea@shell.spacestar.net>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 11/30/2001 17:01:47
On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 12:48 PM, Gavan Fantom <mailto:gavan@coolfactor.org>
wrote:
>Over the last few days I've been having problems with cron stopping
>occasionally.
>
[snip]

>This looks like the usual minutely set of calls, but this time nanosleep
>fails to return.
>
>This is on a PC running NetBSD 1.5.1.
>
>cron stays in this hung state ~forever - it certainly doesn't resolve
>itself within 24 hours.
>
>Has anybody else ever seen this problem?
>

Yes. 
This is normal for cron on most Unix systems, when a job 
is called and does not return before being called again.
eg. it died.
To prevent cron from hanging either fix the offending
script or add "&" to the end of all of your crontab
entries. eg.


SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin
HOME=/var/log
#minute hour mday month wday command
*/3 *  *  *  *  /etc/mail.sh 2>&1 > /dev/null &
  0 *  *  *  *  /usr/bin/newsyslog &








" Stamp out root logins .  .  .  . su "   --Bruce Anderson  
 This message was created and sent using Cyberdog 2.0, MacOS 8.6,
 awk, find, sed, sendmail, sh, and NetBSD a free Multi-Platform OS.
 NetBSD runs on  44 different system architectures featuring 16
 distinct families of CPUs.   http://www.netbsd.org/