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Obsolete Releases => SME 7.x Contribs => Topic started by: LANMonkey on May 24, 2010, 11:21:48 PM

Title: Use this instead of Crontab Manager
Post by: LANMonkey on May 24, 2010, 11:21:48 PM
I have been wanting to start using scheduled tasks in my SME 8 beta.  I looked up the contribs for a solution and found Crontab Manager and tried installing it.  Here is a link to the Contribs page:

http://wiki.contribs.org/Crontab_Manager

Looking it over, I see that even with a Server Manager interface, it is stll necessary to log in from the command line to SME and "expand-templates".  It seems to me to defeat the whole purpose of a Server Manager interface and I think that this thread represents the preferable solution for anyone not adept at using cron:

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,29433.0.html

And especially this entry here:

Quote
mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/crontab/

pico -w  /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/crontab/your_file_name

add your cron entries

/sbin/e-smith/expand-template etc/crontab

more /etc/crontab - just to verify your new entry is there, then

/etc/e-smith/events/actions/restart-crond

Of course you have to log in to the remote SME server to make those entries, but since you have to do that anyway using Crontab Manager, you might as well do it all there using PuTTY or WinSCP.

It helps to know also that "pico" is just an editor and you can use any editor, like the one found in WinSCP to create the file.

The difference between the entries provided by Crontab Manager and the file needed by cron is pretty transparent and there are tutorials on the internet.  Google "tutorial cron" for a quick list.
Title: Re: Use this instead of Crontab Manager
Post by: LANMonkey on May 25, 2010, 12:27:55 AM
I'm testing this method and I'm finding that the last command,

Quote
/etc/e-smith/events/actions/restart-crond

doesn't seem to be available at that location, but there is a command that appears to work:

Quote
/etc/e-smith/events/actions/cron-update
Title: Re: Use this instead of Crontab Manager
Post by: Franco on May 25, 2010, 04:47:44 AM
Hi,
This contrib is way too buggy, use Dungog's Contrib instead, works great without shell intervention.

Best,
Title: Re: Use this instead of Crontab Manager
Post by: LANMonkey on May 25, 2010, 05:58:23 AM
Hi,
This contrib is way too buggy, use Dungog's Contrib instead, works great without shell intervention.

Best,

What are you talking about?  Is there a Dungog version of Crontab Manager?  Is there another crontab interface offered at Dungog?  What is Dungog's Contrib and how do you go about figuring out if there is anything you want there?
Title: Re: Use this instead of Crontab Manager
Post by: janet on May 25, 2010, 09:25:56 AM
LANMonkey

See http://www.dungog.net/wiki/Software
You will have to pay for dungog-cron.
Title: Re: Use this instead of Crontab Manager
Post by: LANMonkey on May 25, 2010, 10:27:05 PM
LANMonkey

See http://www.dungog.net/wiki/Software
You will have to pay for dungog-cron.

Thanks mary, for settling that.
Title: Re: Use this instead of Crontab Manager
Post by: Jean-Philippe Pialasse on May 26, 2010, 06:10:40 PM
raise a bug, it is supposed to expand templates, perhaps not working on sme8


JP
Title: Re: Use this instead of Crontab Manager
Post by: LANMonkey on May 26, 2010, 06:49:45 PM
raise a bug, it is supposed to expand templates, perhaps not working on sme8
JP

Since the documentation says you have to apply "expand-templates" from the command line, I don't see how it would qualify as a bug.  Please see the documentation:

http://wiki.contribs.org/Crontab_Manager

Quote
You can access Crontab Manager interface in the server-manager and then you can easily create/delete crons.

After you made your changes, it is necessary to manually run the following command from the command line:

expand-template /etc/crontab

Without this command, the Crontab contrib does NOT apply the changes you made via the server-manager (Reason: Crontab Manager was developed for SME 6.* and developement seems to be discontinued).
Title: Re: Use this instead of Crontab Manager
Post by: Jean-Philippe Pialasse on May 26, 2010, 07:30:14 PM
Hi,

here is a version corrected for iso problem and also the expand template issue:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/smeserver/contribs/jppialasse/SME7/smeserver-crontab_manager/ (need to sync)

waiting for synchronisation here a temp mirror :

http://www.pialasse.com/smeserver-crontab_manager

I will ask to add this contrib to the repo, and to add a bug stream for it.