/etc/profile not being executed by cron job

/etc/profile not being executed by cron job

[Al Goodniss]

Hi,

Please point me to what I missed. I have a simple cron job doing backups using tar and find. Works flawlessly in an interactive shell. Cron also works fine for fetching mail, etc. The combination doesn't work. 

When I run my bash (tcsh also fails) script via Cron the wrong find is found. Instead of /usr/bin/find I get the windows version. My /etc/profile does prepend the directories, the permissions seen accurate - as per the other fixes that were in the archives. 

What did I miss? 

-Al

--- Test script ---
#!/usr/bin/bash

date

echo $PATH # reports only windows paths, no Cygwin
which find # Finds the win32 version


-- Results --
Thu Sep 25 12:08:00 EST 2003
/c/WINDOWS/system32:/c/WINDOWS:/c/WINDOWS/System32/Wbem:/c/PROGRA~1/ULTRAE~1:/c/Program Files/Micros
oft SQL Server/80/Tools/Binn/:/bin
/c/WINDOWS/system32/find

-- /etc/profile --
PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:$PATH"
export PATH

USER="`id -un`"

# Set up USER's home directory
if [ -z "$HOME" ]; then
  HOME="/home/$USER"
fi

if [ ! -d "$HOME" ]; then
    mkdir -p "$HOME"
fi

export HOME USER

for i in /etc/profile.d/*.sh ; do
    if [ -f $i ]; then
        . $i
    fi
done

export MAKE_MODE=unix
export PS1='\[\033]0;\w\007 \033[32m\]\u@\h \[\033[33m\w\033[0m\] $ '

cd "$HOME"


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Re: /etc/profile not being executed by cron job

[Igor Pechtchanski]

On Thu, 25 Sep 2003, Al Goodniss wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Please point me to what I missed. I have a simple cron job doing backups
> using tar and find. Works flawlessly in an interactive shell. Cron also
> works fine for fetching mail, etc. The combination doesn't work.
>
> When I run my bash (tcsh also fails) script via Cron the wrong find is
> found. Instead of /usr/bin/find I get the windows version. My
> /etc/profile does prepend the directories, the permissions seen accurate
> - as per the other fixes that were in the archives.
>
> What did I miss?
>
> -Al
>
> --- Test script ---
> #!/usr/bin/bash
> [snip]

The regular invocation of bash is a non-login shell, and thus won't
execute /etc/profile.

Try changing the #! line to "#!/usr/bin/bash -l".  Be aware that you will
not be able to use a relative path either to invoke the script or inside
the script after that, as /etc/profile does a 'cd "$HOME"'.

Alternatively, you can add the following to the top of the script:

if ! shopt -q login_shell; then
  exec -l /bin/bash --login "$PWD/$0" "$PWD" "$@"
fi
cd "$1"
shift

The above should work even with relative paths, but I haven't tested it
extensively.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"I have since come to realize that being between your mentor and his route
to the bathroom is a major career booster."  -- Patrick Naughton

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Re: /etc/profile not being executed by cron job

[Al Goodniss]

Thanks Igor.

I followed your adivce and changed the #! line to #!/usr/bin/bash -l and that worked for me. The script I'm using to do backups automatically moves itself around using absolute paths so having profile do that last 'cd "$HOME"' wasn't an issue.

-Al


On Thu, Sep 25, 2003 at 12:38:09PM -0400, Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Sep 2003, Al Goodniss wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > Please point me to what I missed. I have a simple cron job doing backups
> > using tar and find. Works flawlessly in an interactive shell. Cron also
> > works fine for fetching mail, etc. The combination doesn't work.
> >
> > When I run my bash (tcsh also fails) script via Cron the wrong find is
> > found. Instead of /usr/bin/find I get the windows version. My
> > /etc/profile does prepend the directories, the permissions seen accurate
> > - as per the other fixes that were in the archives.
> >
> > What did I miss?
> >
> > -Al
> >
> > --- Test script ---
> > #!/usr/bin/bash
> > [snip]
> 
> The regular invocation of bash is a non-login shell, and thus won't
> execute /etc/profile.
> 
> Try changing the #! line to "#!/usr/bin/bash -l".  Be aware that you will
> not be able to use a relative path either to invoke the script or inside
> the script after that, as /etc/profile does a 'cd "$HOME"'.
> 
> Alternatively, you can add the following to the top of the script:
> 
> if ! shopt -q login_shell; then
>   exec -l /bin/bash --login "$PWD/$0" "$PWD" "$@"
> fi
> cd "$1"
> shift
> 
> The above should work even with relative paths, but I haven't tested it
> extensively.
> 	Igor
> -- 
> 				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
>       |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
> ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
>      |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
>     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!
> 
> "I have since come to realize that being between your mentor and his route
> to the bathroom is a major career booster."  -- Patrick Naughton


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