[vox-tech] Anacron says file not found... but it's there!

[Bill Kendrick]

On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 11:29:12AM -0800, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> bill, try this:
> 
> strace -o anacron.log anacrontab -f -n -d -t /home/foo/.anacrontab

A few things:

  1. I mistyped.  The _command_ is "anacron", not "anacrontab". :^)
     That wasn't the problem, though (I just made the mistake in my email) [1]

  2. I noticed that when I specified full path (/home/foo/.anacrontab)
     I actually got a DIFFERENT error.  I mis-reported, sorry!
     The error I got (leading to the 'No such file or directory') was
     when I used a relative path:  ".anacrontab" or "./.anacrontab".
     It seems anacron changes its working directory before trying to open
     the file.  How annoying! >:^(

and finally:

  3. The ACTUAL error I seem to be getting (when specifying the full path)
     is as follows:

       Anacron 2.3 started on 2003-01-27
       anacron: Can't open timestamp file for job test: Permission denied
       anacron: Aborted


Looking at the strace [2], I noticed the following chdir call:

  chdir("/var/spool/anacron")

...which explains both #2 and #3.  Now... what do I do!? <:^(
Is there something like "cron -e" for anacron?  :^P

-bill!
[1] Gotta remember to actually READ the errors more closely. Sorry!
[2] Gotta remember to think like Mike Simons more often.