rcardena@oracle.com (Ricardo Cardenas) (09/19/90)
Hi wizards, I have a problem you might help me resolve. I have an ELISP (emacs lisp) program that uses a news-reader (GNUS) and tries to connect out to a newshost server via NNTP. When I run it from the shell command line, it works beautifully. It also works fine when I put it in the background from the command line. Now I want it to run automatically from crontab, but it hangs for hours when trying to open the NNTP connection. Then the program dies, never having connected. The same thing happens if I put my program into the background FROM A SHELL SCRIPT (as opposed to from the command line, where it works fine). What differences are there when running with crontab as opposed to running directly from the shell? Anything I should be aware of? I posted the following to gnu.emacs.gnus but noone has been able to help me. Thanks in advance, Ricardo rcardena@oracle.com (please email if possible) Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.gnus From: rcardena@oracle.com (Ricardo Cardenas) Subject: HELP: trying to run a GNUS elisp program from crontab Organization: Oracle Corp. Distribution: gnu Date: Sat, 15 Sep 90 23:33:37 GMT gnus-batch-kill (in gnus.el) works well from the cmd line. Now I am trying to get it to run from crontab. But it hangs. It's getting stuck in trying to establish the connection to the NNTP server (I checked the output). It just hangs. Any reason the connection can't be established when running the program from cron ? Am I missing something? I have a Sun-3/80, Emacs 18.55.1, GNUS 3.13, NNTP 3.10. Thanks, please email if you can help.. Ricky rcardena@oracle.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ here's ps ux output: USER PID %CPU %MEM SZ RSS TT STAT START TIME COMMAND rcardena 7440 72.8 5.1 520 344 ? R N 16:07 13:49 /bin/emacs -batch -l /elisp/gnus -f gnus-batch-kill talk.bizarre rcardena 7439 0.0 0.4 32 24 ? I N 16:07 0:00 sh -c /bin/emacs -batch -l /elisp/gnus -f gnus-batch-kill talk.bizarre and here's my personal crontab entry 0 16 * * * /bin/emacs -batch -l /elisp/gnus -f gnus-batch-kill talk.bizarre -- Ricardo Cardenas \\/\ INTERNET: rcardena@oracle.com Oracle Corp. \/\\ USENET: uunet!oracle!rcardena Redwood Shores, CA, USA \\
gorpong@ping.uucp (Gordon C. Galligher) (09/22/90)
In article <RCARDENA.90Sep18163424@inti.oracle.com> rcardena@oracle.com (Ricardo Cardenas) writes: > >What differences are there when running with crontab as opposed to >running directly from the shell? Anything I should be aware of? I >posted the following to gnu.emacs.gnus but noone has been able to help >me. Thanks in advance, > One of the major differences is terminal attachment. When you execute it in the shell, it has a controlling terminal (namely yours). When you background it, it also has a controlling terminal. When jobs are executed from cron, they do not have controlling terminals. Gnu-emacs may attempt to do things with a terminal, which it does not have. In your 'ps' listing: >USER PID %CPU %MEM SZ RSS TT STAT START TIME COMMAND >rcardena 7440 72.8 5.1 520 344 ? R N 16:07 13:49 /bin/emacs -batch -l /elisp/gnus -f gnus-batch-kill talk.bizarre >rcardena 7439 0.0 0.4 32 24 ? I N 16:07 0:00 sh -c /bin/emacs -batch -l /elisp/gnus -f gnus-batch-kill talk.bizarre ^^ It shows no controlling terminal. This may have nothing to do with your problem, but it is definitely something different from a shell and cron job. I do hope this helps, and if not you directly, I hope it will jog someone's memory into figuring out the problem. -- Gordon. -- Gordon C. Galligher 9127 Potter Rd. #2E Des. Plaines, Ill. 60016-4881 telxon!ping%gorpong@uunet.uu.net (not tested) (Is this even legal??) ...!uunet!telxon!ping!gorpong (tested) (And it works!) "It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy." - Janov Pelorat -- _Foundation's Edge_