Crontab Question

Software Info
Thu, 11 Apr 2019 15:29:01 -0000

Well thanks for all the input. I just have to tp keep working at it. Again, much
appreciated.


Regards
SI

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Walter Cramer
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2019 4:40 PM
To: Software Info
Cc: Jonathan Chen; freebsd-stable at freebsd.org
Subject: RE: Crontab Question

On Wed, 10 Apr 2019, Software Info wrote:

> OK. So although the script is located in my home directory, it doesn???t
> start there?  Sorry but I don???t quite understand. Could you explain a
> little further please?

Both 'cp' and 'ls' are located in /bin.  But if I run the
'ls' command in
/root, 'ls' can't find 'cp' (unless I tell it where to look)
- even though
/bin *is* in my PATH -

server7:/root # ls cp
ls: cp: No such file or directory
server7:/root # ls /bin/cp
/bin/cp

Where the system looks for *commands*, to execute, is different from where
it looks for other files, which those commands use.  The latter is
generally only the current directory (unless you tell it otherwise).
When cron runs a script as root, "current directory" will be /root.

BUT - for security and other reasons, it would be better to have cron run
your script as you (not root), and as '/home/me/myscript' (instead of
adding your home directory to PATH in /etc/crontab).

-Walter