[LRUG] Disrespectful cron

[Andrew Stewart]

Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to set up cron on a server so that I can clear out old  
sessions, rotate log files, etc.  I've used cron lots of times before  
but for some reason can't get it working now.  Is anyone out there  
good at this sort of thing?

I've simplified what I'm trying to do as far as I can but am still  
stuck.  Here it is:

I have a Ruby script at /home/deploy/cron_test.rb:

   #!/usr/bin/ruby
   puts 'Hello'

Its permissions are 777.  Running 'which ruby' gives /usr/bin/ruby.

crontab -l gives:

35      *      *       *       *       /usr/bin/ruby /home/deploy/ 
cron_test.rb > /home/deploy/cron.log

(I update the minutes field every time I try to test cron.)

Now I would expect cron to fire at 35min past any hour and write  
'Hello' to the file /home/deploy/cron.log.  But nothing is written to  
that file.  In fact the file is not created at all.  Creating it  
myself and giving it 777 permissions doesn't help either.

So as far as I can tell cron is not executing my crontab.  cron  
itself is running as proved by ps aux | grep cron:

root     32229  0.0  0.3  2480  960 ?        Ss   08:37   0:00 crond
deploy     950  0.0  0.1  1672  448 pts/0    R+   11:04   0:00 grep cron

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks and regards,
Andy Stewart