Thanks to those of you who replied to my question about cron failing to
submit jobs. Here's
my original question:
On Fri, 25 Oct 1996, Andrew Reynolds wrote:
>Hi there, the system we're currently using is an AlphaServer 2100 4/200,
>which is running Digital Unix 3.0B. I discovered the problem this morning,
>and it's rather puzzling.
>
>It seems that although the cron process was still running, it was no longer
>processing any jobs. When I looked at the logfile, I found these entries:
>
>! MAXRUN (25) procs reached Fri Oct 25 07:48:00 1996
>! rescheduling a cron job Fri Oct 25 07:48:00 1996
>! MAXRUN (25) procs reached Fri Oct 25 07:48:00 1996
>! rescheduling a cron job Fri Oct 25 07:48:00 1996
>! MAXRUN (25) procs reached Fri Oct 25 07:48:00 1996
>! rescheduling a cron job Fri Oct 25 07:48:00 1996
>
>Actually, I found about 1.5MB worth of them. I searched the archives, and it
>did seem that someone had this problem before with 2.0, but there was no
>summary. I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who knows why this happens, or
>what can be done to prevent it. I'll summarize the responses. Thanks.
It seems that DEC hardcoded the maximum number of processes that cron can
run to 25. These
were the suggestions that I received for dealing with this problem:
Bob Haskins <haskins_at_myapc.com>, mentioned that he had seen this problem as
well, and that DEC had an "unofficial" patch.
Tim Mooney <mooney_at_dogbert.cc.ndsu.NoDak.edu>, suggested that although
/var/adm/cron/queuedefs exists under Digital Unix, it doesn't do anything,
and that investigating using at(1)'s queueing features might be a suitable
work-around.
In the end, I did converse with Digital Unix support, and the potential
solution we came up with was to install the patched cron daemon for 3.2 (you
may recall that we're running 3.0B). I'm going to install this, and monitor
it closely, until it's apprent whether the daemon will be stable or not.
Thanks for the responses.
--
Andrew Reynolds, Systems Administrator, Novanet Inc.
Andrew.Reynolds_at_Novanet.ns.ca
Received on Tue Oct 29 1996 - 15:05:20 NZDT