[comp.unix.programmer] differances between at and crontab

david@talgras.UUCP (David Hoopes) (05/30/91)

Help!

    Does anyone have any idea why a program that works fine when executed
via a crontab entry would always go off to la la land when it is executed 
via an at command?  My program seems to be running (maybe in some kind of
a loop) but it is not doing anything.

    I have seen this on SCO Xenix 2.3.2 and SCO Unix.  It is really hard
to debug a problem that only appears when the program is run from an at
command.  Any sudgestions or ideas would be a great help.

Thanks in advance.



-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
David Hoopes                              Tallgrass Technologies Inc. 
uunet!talgras!david                       11100 W 82nd St.          
Voice: (913) 492-6002 x323                Lenexa, Ks  66214        

urban@cbnewsl.att.com (john.urban) (05/31/91)

In article <85@talgras.UUCP> david@talgras.UUCP (David Hoopes) writes:
>Help!
>
>    Does anyone have any idea why a program that works fine when executed
>via a crontab entry would always go off to la la land when it is executed 
>via an at command?  My program seems to be running (maybe in some kind of
>a loop) but it is not doing anything.
>
>    I have seen this on SCO Xenix 2.3.2 and SCO Unix.  It is really hard
>to debug a problem that only appears when the program is run from an at
>command.  Any sudgestions or ideas would be a great help.
>

at(1)/batch(1) commands inherit the users environment when they are set up,
where as cron jobs don't.

Thus if you're at shell script does an env and your cron job does an env you'll
see very different output.  Purhaps your application is breaking due to:
	PATH, ulimit, or Current Working directory?

Sincerely,

John Ben Urban