Why this command does not work from cron.daily file?

Question

I have a file in cron.daily:

root@nagios.example.com:/# cat /etc/cron.daily/nagios-logs
/usr/bin/nice -n 19 /bin/gzip --fast /var/log/nagios3/archives/*
root@nagios.example.com:/# ls -l /etc/cron.daily/nagios-logs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 65 Apr 15 17:51 /etc/cron.daily/nagios-logs
root@nagios.example.com:/#

but it's not doing anything. Any ideas why?

How did you know it is not executing? Did you try it manually? — Khaled, Apr 17 '13 at 09:38
@Khaled It does not compress uncompressed files in `/var/log/nagios3/archives/`. When I execute it manually it works. — Poma, Apr 17 '13 at 09:39
Why not have it in a script? That way you define the shell.. — NickW, Apr 17 '13 at 09:51
Did you try appending `>> /tmp/file.log 2>&1` to see if there is any debug/error? — Khaled, Apr 17 '13 at 09:52

Erik Sjölund · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-17T21:04:46.673

Your file /etc/cron.daily/nagios-logs is neither a program nor an executable script. You can make it a shell script by adding #!/bin/sh to the beginning of the file

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/nice -n 19 /bin/gzip --fast /var/log/nagios3/archives/*

The shell script also needs to be executable

root@nagios.example.com:/# chmod 755 /etc/cron.daily/nagios-logs

but I see from the output of your ls -l command that your file already has the correct file permissions

Why this command does not work from cron.daily file?

1 Answers1