9.10 broke my cron firefox launch

[dustin.kerber]

Hey everyone,

So, I have a kiosk with a very simple cron script to make sure that firefox is open. If firefox is not open, it will then open it.

This script has been working fine in 9.04, but now that I am on 910, it refuses to open firefox. If I run the script manually, it works fine, but in the event it is launched from cron, firefox just doesn't open.



#!/bin/bash
if [ "$(ps aux | grep "firefox" | grep -v grep)" == "" ]
then
firefox &
fi


Edit: Clarification

[dustin.kerber]

If anyone could help me out with this, I would really appreciate it. I keep thinking it might be some sort of permission issue, but I am at a loss. Any ideas?

[yeleek]

interesting - nothing wrong with that script.

Is cron even starting the script do you know? i.e. is it an issue re executing the script rather than executing ff?

[dustin.kerber]

Cron does appear to be starting. To test, I added a line for debugging.



if [ "$(ps aux | grep "firefox" | grep -v grep)" == "" ]
then
date >> /home/kiosk/Desktop/test
firefox &
fi


I have been tailing the test file and it is updated every minute.

My cron entry is as follows


* * * * * /home/kiosk/ssh_tunnel.sh

[dustin.kerber]

Could it be something to do with having to state the display to launch on? Frankly, I am grasping at straws...

[dustin.kerber]

I also tried setting my cron entry to


* * * * * DISPLAY=:0.0 /home/kiosk/ssh_tunnel.sh


Still no go.

The annoying part is that this works fine if I run the script manually. Any other ideas?

[wojox]

Try:


*/1 * * * * <username> /home/kiosk/ssh_tunnel.sh

[dustin.kerber]

My cron entry now reads


*/1 * * * * kiosk /home/kiosk/ssh_tunnel.sh


Now, the test file isn't getting updated at all, so it appears the script isn't being run.

[dustin.kerber]

Same thing with


*/1 * * * * root /home/kiosk/ssh_tunnel.sh

[dustin.kerber]

What I really can't figure out is why this would work perfectly in 9.04, but be broken in 9.10...

[wojox]

Is this running it's own crontab or did you add it to /etc/crontab?

What happens if you drop the file extension .sh?

[dustin.kerber]

Dropping the .sh extension didn't seem to make any difference.

I am adding it to cron via 'crontab -e'.

[dustin.kerber]

Is there any way for me to debug cron that might help?

[dustin.kerber]

Come on, I know there is at least one Linux Guru out there who has an answer for me. Please?

[Dakra]

I have problems with cron/anacron, too. I've googled the issue for a while and I have found the chkconfig command: (I had to install it first: sudo apt-get install chkconfig)

chkconfig --list | grep cron
anacron 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off
cron 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off
I have read some of them should be 'on'. The thing is I don't know what I'm supposed to do to turn them 'on'.

[dustin.kerber]

I just wanted to pop in and say that it appears one of the recent updates fixed my issues. Thanks for your help, all!