cron job not executing in MACOSXS 10.3

[Bill Eccles]

Gentleones,

In OSXS 10.3, I’ve added one line to my /etc/crontab, below:

[code:1:26fe26a6a9]0,15,30,45 * * * * root /usr/sbin/learnspam [/code:1:26fe26a6a9]

(There are tabs between each of the items in the above table.)

As you can see, the /etc/crontab file has kept its permissions and ownerships:

[code:1:26fe26a6a9]-r–r–r– 1 root wheel 339 7 Jan 07:13 /etc/crontab [/code:1:26fe26a6a9]

I know that it is still in working order because daily.out gets updated by /usr/sbin/periodic when it should.

And you can see that the script being called has correct (as best I can tell–they match /usr/sbin/periodic) permissions, too:

[code:1:26fe26a6a9]-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 851 5 Jan 15:43 /usr/sbin/learnspam [/code:1:26fe26a6a9]

(The script is at the bottom of this post.) Furthermore, I can execute the script manually with no errors with “sudo /usr/sbin/learnspam”.

But the sa-learn.log file shows no activity (it’s there, owned by root, and reflects changes when I manually invoke learnspam), and indeed, none has occurred because, as reported by sa-learn, the spam builds up until I manually execute the learnspam script.

Anyone got some clues on this one?

Many thanks,
Bill

learnspam:

[code:1:26fe26a6a9]#!/bin/sh –

SPAM=/var/spool/imap/reportspam/*.
HAM=/var/spool/imap/reportnotspam/*.
LOGFILE=/var/log/sa-learn.log

echo ‘ ‘ >> $LOGFILE
echo "********************* Learnspam run starting " >> $LOGFILE
date +%Y-%m-%d+%H:%M:%S >> $LOGFILE
echo ‘ ‘ >> $LOGFILE
echo ‘Learning as spam:’ >> $LOGFILE
sa-learn –spam /var/spool/imap/user/reportspam/*. >> $LOGFILE 2>&1

rm /var/spool/imap/user/reportspam/[0-9]*
sudo -u cyrus /usr/bin/cyrus/bin/reconstruct user/reportspam

echo ‘ ‘ >> $LOGFILE
echo ‘Learning as ham:’ >> $LOGFILE

sa-learn –ham /var/spool/imap/user/reportnotspam/*. >> $LOGFILE 2>&1

rm /var/spool/imap/user/reportnotspam/[0-9]*
sudo -u cyrus /usr/bin/cyrus/bin/reconstruct user/reportnotspam

echo ‘ ‘ >> $LOGFILE
echo ‘Script learnspam done.’ >> $LOGFILE

# /usr/local/bin/sa-learn –rebuild -p /var/amavis/.spamassassin/user_prefs[/code:1:26fe26a6a9]

[Anonymous]

Try writing your cron entry like this:
[code:1:5089f52247]
*/15 * * * * sh /usr/sbin/learnspam
[/code:1:5089f52247]

[Bill Eccles]

I did as you suggested with no change to the operation (or lack thereof, really) in the cron jobs executed (or not).

This one’s got me stumped.

Many thanks!

[Bill Eccles]

If there’s not a trailing <CR> (or maybe it’s <CR><LF>… anyway…) at the end of the last line of the file, cron won’t read it.

To make sure everything’s cool, I added a comment line to become the last line of the file.

Yikes. That was tough!

Thanks for thinking about it, all,
Bill

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