Error messages when running CRON jobs

[micvog]

I recently discovered that if I enter the CRON job commands (sudo periodic daily/weekly/monthly) in upper case, that it provides results of the particular command; and in my case, a number of error messages.

For example, when I run "SUDO PERIODIC DAILY", among other messages, I get:

...
Removing scratch and junk files:
msgs: /var/msgs/bounds: No such file or directory
...
mail:
postqueue: warning: Mail system is down -- accessing queue directly
Mail queue is empty
...

"SUDO PERIODIC WEEKLY" results in:

...
Rebuilding whatis database:
find: /usr/local/man: No such file or directory
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/DHparams_print.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/DHparams_print_fp.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/DSAparams_print.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/DSAparams_print_fp.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_ASN1_OBJECT.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_DHparams.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_DSA_PUBKEY.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_DSA_SIG.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_DSAPrivateKey.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_DSAPublicKey.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_Netscape_RSA.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_PKCS8PrivateKey_bio.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_PKCS8PrivateKey_fp.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_PKCS8PrivateKey_nid_bio.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_PKCS8PrivateKey_nid_fp.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_RSA_PUBKEY.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_RSAPrivateKey.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_RSAPublicKey.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_SSL_SESSION.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_X509.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_X509_ALGOR.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_X509_bio.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_X509_CRL.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_X509_CRL_bio.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_X509_CRL_fp.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_X509_fp.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_X509_NAME.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_X509_REQ.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_X509_REQ_bio.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_X509_REQ_fp.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/i2d_X509_SIG.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/OpenSSL_add_ssl_algorithms.3ssl
Cannot find file: /usr/share/man/man3/SSLeay_add_ssl_algorithms.3ssl
...

Should I be concerned about any of these? I am use to being more familiar with how my computer works (I have a Windows background). Can anyone recommend a good book that is more technical than Pogue's?

FWIW this is on a 17" iMac 1.8GHz G5 and 10.3.7.

Thanks.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Can anyone recommend a good book that is more technical than Pogue's?

Although I like Ted Landau's, OS X Helpline... this may be more helpful in your case. It comes well-reviewed...

 

[Bear]

The messages come out whether you type the "sudo periodic ..." in upper or lower case... the command runs them either way it seems.

Anyway, those messages are standard. The daily/weekly/monthly jobs are set up for a generic system. The /usr/share/man/... either are files that used to be there but someone forgot to clean up something or they may be files that are on the Server version of Mac OS X.

 

[micvog]

Although I like Ted Landau's, OS X Helpline... this may be more helpful in your case. It comes well-reviewed...

Thanks Blue Velvet... I have added both books to my Wishlist to remind me to look for them when they release Tiger-related updates. Both look excellent.

 

[micvog]

The messages come out whether you type the "sudo periodic ..." in upper or lower case... the command runs them either way it seems.

I just double checked... I only get the detailed output when using all caps... when using lowercase just the prompt comes up after a minute or two.

Anyway, those messages are standard. The daily/weekly/monthly jobs are set up for a generic system. The /usr/share/man/... either are files that used to be there but someone forgot to clean up something or they may be files that are on the Server version of Mac OS X.

Thanks for the info.

 

[mkrishnan]

I just double checked... I only get the detailed output when using all caps... when using lowercase just the prompt comes up after a minute or two.

I recently made a script that does the tasks, prebinding and repair permission and then shuts down the computer from the command line, so that I can use it once every couple of weeks to do a reboot on my iBook. Funny, I have exactly the same experience -- I also only get the stdout output if I use caps.... I am not a bash expert, but I don't have any explanation for that... however, fun fun, do note that if you type man periodic, there are lots of other options for what to do with the output. I think though that what I am going to do is pipe my whole script's output to a log file....

EDIT: FWIW, I have an iBook running 10.3.7, and I do not get the list of missing man files on doing periodic weekly....

 

[jeremy.king]

I also only get the stdout output if I use caps.... I am not a bash expert, but I don't have any explanation for that...

Simple, while Apple tries to support case insensitivity (a bad idea to start with), bash is still case sensitive. Since there isn't a DAILY_output variable assigned in /etc/defaults/periodic.conf, stdout is used as the default per the man file on periodic.

If you don't believe me addd the following to your conf file and execute again - then notice the lack of output to standard out. Instead it went to /var/log/daily.out

DAILY_output="/var/log/daily.out"                       # user or /file
DAILY_show_success="YES"                                # scripts returning 0
DAILY_show_info="YES"                                   # scripts returning 1
DAILY_show_badconfig="NO"                               # scripts returning 2

 

[mkrishnan]

If you don't believe me addd the following to your conf file and execute again - then notice the lack of output to standard out. Instead it went to /var/log/daily.out

No, that sounds very reasonable... so Apple de-case-sensitizes the PERIODIC because it's a command, but not the DAILY, because its a modifier/specifier....

So if I'm following correctly, sudo periodic daily is the correct case, and DAILY circumvents that.

I'm not really sold on case-insensitivity either...although I got really used to another equaliy sketchy shortcut in Windows' CLI.... did you ever notice that you can omit trailing quotations in Windows, like:

cd "My Documents

=

cd "My Documents"

I don't know why I'm so lazy to type in a ", but for some reason I keep doing that by accident in bash on my Mac.

 

[jeremy.king]

So if I'm following correctly, sudo periodic daily is the correct case, and DAILY circumvents that.

That is correct, but daily isn't really a modifier (these usually start with a "-"), it's an input parameter to the periodic command, and is used as a prefex when looking for the configuration variables.

*Most* commands will use lowercase, however some modifiers are in uppercase (such as chmod -R, for example).

Anyways enough babbling...