CentOS - Jan 2017 - cron job failures with a perl script containing Astro::Time

Everyone,

I am building a gateway server with a new : CentOS Linux release
7.3.1611 (Core)??with 3.10.0-514.2.2.el7.x86_64 kernel.

Everything was going find, but I was not able to get a particular
cronjob to function properly that contained a perl script with
Astro::Time as an include file.  Astro::Time was installed with the use
of the cpan module downloaded from the Centos repositories.

The error message I get in the logs is :

Can't locate Astro/Time.pm in @INC (@INC contains:
/usr/local/lib64/perl5 /usr/local/share/perl5
/usr/lib64/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl
/usr/lib64/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 .) at /usr/local/bin/s.bkup.degw3.prl
line 12.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/local/bin/s.bkup.degw3.prl
line 12.


Line 12 is the line in the perl scrip that contains :

use Astro::Time;

The script works find from the command line, but will not work at all
in a cron job.

After I reviewed the previous posts on this mail list about Centos 7
cron job problems I was motivated to change the PATH statements in the 
/etc/crontab file to include all of the PATH's in my root environment
while using a terminal interface.

/etc/crontab file :
SHELL=/bin/bash
#PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
PATH=/usr/lib64/qt-
.3/bin:/root/perl5/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bi
n:/root/bin
QT_PLUGIN_PATH=/usr/lib64/kde4/plugins:/usr/lib/kde4/plugin
MAILTO=root


The original /etc/crontab file was :
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root


Unfortuantely I am still not able to get this script to work.

Has anyone else had this problem and found a solution?

Greg Ennis

On 2017-01-02, Gregory P. Ennis <PoMec at PoMec.Net>
wrote:
>
> The error message I get in the logs is :
>
> Can't locate Astro/Time.pm in @INC (@INC contains:
> /usr/local/lib64/perl5 /usr/local/share/perl5
> /usr/lib64/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl
> /usr/lib64/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 .) at /usr/local/bin/s.bkup.degw3.prl
> line 12.
> BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/local/bin/s.bkup.degw3.prl
> line 12.
[snip]
> The script works find from the command line, but will not work at all
> in a cron job.
This almost always points to something in the environment.

Where did Astro::Time actually get installed?  Check the above paths to
see if it is actually there, or whether cpan put it somewhere else.  If
it put Astro::Time elsewhere, you will need to add a PERL5LIB export to
your crontab file (or better, make a bash wrapper, point cron to that,
and put the PERL5LIB variable there).

If you put it in crontab, you should get the current value from your
shell, and put that into crontab (verify it looks reasonable first).

echo $PERL5LIB
# or
env |grep PERL5LIB

If you don't have PERL5LIB set, you can take the paths you currently
have defined (see your path list above) and add the path to Astro::Time
to that.

--keith


-- 
kkeller at wombat.san-francisco.ca.us

[snip]
> The script works find from the command line, but will not work at all
> in a cron job.
This almost always points to something in the environment.

Where did Astro::Time actually get installed???Check the above paths to
see if it is actually there, or whether cpan put it somewhere else.??If
it put Astro::Time elsewhere, you will need to add a PERL5LIB export to
your crontab file (or better, make a bash wrapper, point cron to that,
and put the PERL5LIB variable there).

If you put it in crontab, you should get the current value from your
shell, and put that into crontab (verify it looks reasonable first).

echo $PERL5LIB
# or
env |grep PERL5LIB

If you don't have PERL5LIB set, you can take the paths you currently
have defined (see your path list above) and add the path to Astro::Time
to that.

--keith

Keith,

Thanks for your reply.  I am not totally sure what I did when I
installed the Centos 7 on this machine, but I did identify that I had
inappropriately installed perl-File-HomeDir.noarch which I normally do
not use. ?

This was the only thing that I identified that was done
differently.  I yum removed perl-File-HomeDir.noarch, but the problem in using
Astro::Time from a cron job or an account different than root was not fixed.  I
finally wrote a wrapper that sets the environment variables to the same command
line env variables as root so that the root cron backup routines would work.

I spent about 8 hours trying to fix this problem, but finally the
wrapper bypass was the only thing that worked.  ?I not totally sure if 
perl-File-HomeDir.noarch was the culprit, but I will certainly be
careful not to install it again.

Thanks for your help !!!

Greg