Very Computer

This has now happened 3 times on my customers 59H running 4.3.2-

The cron daemon is running OK, but no jobs scheduled by
"crontab" or "at" will run, the only way I got them to run was
to kill the cron daemon. It then re-spawned and all was OK.

Any ideas why this should happen?

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did the cron.log have any messages in it? good or bad.

--
Bernie Chandler
http://www.nationwide.net/~bernie

Oh yes!
This log reveals the following:-

0481-087 The c queue maximum run limit has been reached
The cron job is being re-scheduled
0481-088 The MAXRUN limit of 40 processes has been reached
The cron job is being rescheduled

These messages are repeated many many times. I'm not sure if
these parameters are configurable or not. Any ideas? The system
was rebooted a few days ago but the problem has re-occured.

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Read man pages on queuedefs.

The default in AIX 4.3.3.0 for cron is 100 jobs. It sounds like either you
have an earlier version of AIX where this is lower or it has been changed in
your /var/adm/cron/queuedefs file.

--
Regards,
Alex Robinson

The /var/adm/cron/queuedefs file is empty, it has not been
modified since it was shipped, it states that the default number
of jobs allowed to run is 100, but the errors appear when it
hits 40.

Any ideas?

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Try 'lsattr -El sys0' and see what maxuproc is. My guess is that it is 40.
Although, I seem to recall that root isn't constrained by this. Others will
have to correct me on this.

Anyway, if maxuproc is 40, try setting it to, say, 100. Alternatively, from
the man pages of queuedefs, set the value for queued jobs.

--
Regards,
Alex Robinson

** the comments about "100j" is just a comment describing the fields.
Don't know if I would believe that it is really a 'default'.
The 40 is sounding suspeciously like "maxuprocs" which you can
view and change with "smit chgsys"
--
Norman Levin

The maxuproc is set to 200. I have tried searching in vain for
info on MAXRUN and the "c queue". Any ideas?

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Garbage,

I've lost the original thread, so I can't remember where your errors were
logged nor what the original error message was. However, have you checked
the /var/adm/cron/log file?

--
Regards,
Alex Robinson

The log errors are as follows: -

0481-087 The c queue maximum run limit has been reached The cron
job is being re-scheduled
0481-088 The MAXRUN limit of 40 processes has been reached The
cron job is being rescheduled

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Garbage,

Are you familiar with the URL http://www.rs6000.ibm.com/cgi-bin/ds_form?
This is where the AIX on-line manuals reside. Search this for the error
0481, and see what you get. There isn't a direct answer to your question.
But, what is there definitely points to an error in cron.

My guess now is that :

1. You have file permission/ownership problems with the crontab files. [Not
likely, but worth investigating. A case for using the TCB.]

2. A bug in cron.[Possible. Call AIX support]

3. Running out of disk space. [ My candidate for most likely. Check man
pages on cron and see where the jobs that are queued have any temp files,
log files, etc kept. Also try 'strings /usr/bin/cron' and see all of the
directories listed there.]

4. Something else all together.

For testing, create 40+ entries that runs a simple script or command. BTW,
are you running 40+ jobs all at the same time or are they spread over a
whole day, hour, etc? Also, you say 'Log errors", i sthis /var/adm/syslog or
errlog?

'strings /usr/bin/cron|grep MAXRUN' produces : "MAXRUN (%d) procs reached"
so the MAXRUN limit appears to be coded into cron.

--
Regards,
Alex Robinson