cron job error: CANNOT EXECUTE

[jn1971]

Hi Gurus,

I created a simple shell script (named cleanup @ /usr dir). It deletes old files in a directory at selected times. Please see the following:
#!/bin/sh
cp /dev/null /var/adm/wtmpx
cp /dev/null /var/cron/olog
rm /var/adm/messages.0
rm /var/adm/messages.1
rm /var/adm/messages.2
rm /var/log/syslog.0
rm /var/log/syslog.1
rm /var/log/syslog.2
rm /var/log/syslog.3

I can run it successfully by using sh command. However, I tried to cron it and i got the following error:

-----------beginning of error message ---------------------------------------
From oracle Thu Aug 2 08:16:00 2001
Received: (from oracle@localhost)
by prod_sun(8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8)
for oracle; Thu, 2 Aug 2001 08:16:00 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 08:16:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: oracle
Message-Id: <200108021516@prod-sun>
To: oracle
Subject: Output from "cron" command
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 129

Your "cron" job on awp-sun
/usr/deltrc

produced the following output:

sh: /usr/cleanup: cannot execute

-----------end of error message -----------------------------------

the cron command line is
0,15,30,45 * * * * /usr/cleanup.

This is my first time to create a cronjob from scratch. Please advise me if i missed or made any mistake. It would be appreciated very much.

oracle 7.1.4 Unix os.

Thanks,
JN :(

[amar]

If you mean that you can execute the "cleanup" script as follows:

$ sh cleanup

then execute the following command and it should run from the cron

$ chmod 755 cleanup


(it basically does not have execute perms)

-amar

[rcherch]

Is the owner of the cron job running your script the same owner of the file?

This sometimes can cause issues if they are not.

Good Luck

[oracle10]

It maybe help if you add the environment variant (.profile) to your cronfile.

HTH
-mike

[marist89]

Yes, this looks like a permissions problem. Make sure you have execute permission on the /usr/cleanup script.

ls -l /usr/cleanup should have something like:
-rwxr-xr-x /usr/cleanup

[jn1971]

Thanks millions, guys. It works after i did the chmod 755 ...