Problem with crontab reboot

Latest response

Hi,

I try to schedule a reboot of one server with crond and this command line :
00 12 12 * * [ "$(date '+\%u')" -eq 0 ] && /sbin/reboot

It works on some server but not in this one.
I see that cron execute the command line , but the serveur doesn't reboot.

grep boot cron

Jun 12 12:00:02 lxsar37 CROND[7307]: (root) CMD ([ "$(date '+%u')" -eq 0 ] && /sbin/reboot)

who -b

     d▒marrage syst▒me 2016-03-22 05:35

cat /etc/redhat-release

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.7 (Santiago)
#

Does anyone can help me?
Best regards.

DV
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Responses

DV Community Member 20 points
13 June 2016 9:51 AM

sorry for the bold command line.

Siem Korteweg's picture Guru 1450 points
13 June 2016 11:59 AM

Hi David,

The "\" is bothering you:

[ "$(date '+\%u')" -eq 1 ] && echo a
bash: [: \1: integer expression expected

Without "\":

vdi9093.eu.asml.com:~ > [ "$(date '+%u')" -eq 1 ] && echo a
a
DV Community Member 20 points
13 June 2016 12:15 PM

Hi, That's not the problem, in crontab you must escape de "%" with "\". I try with the 2 syntaxes and without "\", crond don't see the end of the command line Jun 13 14:12:01 lxsar37 CROND[25898]: (root) CMD ([ "$(date '+) Jun 13 14:12:01 lxsar37 CROND[25897]: (root) CMD ([ "$(date '+%u')" -eq 1 ] && touch /tmp/test)

Siem Korteweg's picture Guru 1450 points
13 June 2016 12:55 PM

Sorry, I just checked via an interactive shell and ignored the cron context.

Redirected in cron stderr of the date command (with "\%u") to a file and the message is: date: invalid date `%u' I am not sure which limitation of the environment of cron jobs is causing this.

DV Community Member 20 points
15 June 2016 1:12 PM

The command date is not the problem, The redirection of standard output and error give me no error message Jun 15 15:07:01 lxsar37 crond[5998]: (root) RELOAD (/var/spool/cron/root) Jun 15 15:07:02 lxsar37 CROND[27210]: (root) CMD (date '+%u' 2>&1 >/tmp/test4) Jun 15 15:07:04 lxsar37 crontab[27212]: (root) LIST (root) [root@lxsar37 ~]# cat /tmp/test4 3

The problem seems to be with the reboot command. I will try shutdown.

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