Cron says "bad command"

[Geoffrey Leach]

On 02/19/2010 02:51:56 PM, Konstantin Svist wrote:
> On 02/18/2010 10:01 AM, Geoffrey Leach wrote:
> > In /etc/crontab, I have this line:
> > 30  *  *  *  *  /home/root/fix_mail
> >
> > root at mtranch[221]->ls -l /home/root/fix_mail
> > -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1324 2010-02-18 07:04 /home/root/fix_mail*
> >
> > Crond sees this and says (from /var/log/cron)
> > Feb 18 07:06:01 mtranch crond[1362]: (CRON) bad command
> (/etc/crontab)
> >
> > /home/root/fix_mail is a perl script,
> > root at mtranch[222]->head -1 /home/root/fix_mail
> > #!/usr/bin/perl
> >
> > And executes correctly when run from the command line.
> >
> > Any thoughts on what the source of the complaint might be?
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> >   
> 
> You have your /root in /home?? That's unusual...
> Maybe there's some permissions problem with /home?

Hmmm .. just can't get no respect :-)

It may be unusual to have /root in /home, but it simplifies the 
intallation of new versions of Fedora.

I finally gave in and read the source. It appears that cron requires a 
user name before the command. That is, 

	 *  *  *  *  *  <username> command to be executed

in /etc/crontab entries.