[Koha-devel] Koha on Ubuntu LTS

Mon Jul 30 00:51:31 CEST 2012

At 07:51 AM 7/30/2012 +1200, Chris Cormack wrote:
>If you look carefully you will note that it is cron not Koha trying to use 
>the mta. Which you don't have (or haven't configured)
>
>This is a much lower level OS thing, looks like you have mucked up your 
>cron set up. Note not the koha cron jobs, but cron itself.
>
>You will want to fix that.

Thanks for the reply.  OK - so I (wrongly?) bypassed crontab when I found 
that Ubuntu|Koha|me had created 'root' in /var/spool/cron/crontabs.

The reason I'me in some doubt about whether it was Koha or me that 
originally created the file, is that this is the only line that started 
with '*/5 * *' (the Koha default from all documents that I've seen) and 
that I always use '5 * *' (or whatever value I want - one minute for Zebra 
from experience on our production server.)

Also, user koha is not in the sudoers file, so cannot use crontab 
-e.  Maybe Makefile.PL (or one of the other scripts that it calls) put it 
there during the time that Makefile was running as user paul (root 
privileges)?

If I use crontab -e (just tried it), vi writes to a 
"/tmp/crontab.gCZpqN/crontab" which Ubuntu then moves to 
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/root -- not to /etc/cron.d or anywhere else.

I checked our production server (Ubuntu 11.10, Koha 3.6.1) and found 
exactly the same set up in /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root:

         # Env Vars Necessary for running KOHA related Cron jobs
         PERL5LIB = /usr/share/koha/lib
         KOHA_CONF = /etc/koha/koha-conf.xml
         KOHA_CRON_PATH = /usr/share/koha/bin/cronjobs

         # ** KOHA **
         # ZEBRA INDEX UPDATES incremental index updates throughout
         # the day for both authorities and bibs : -z means incremental
         # Checking for new/deleted records every: 1 MINUTE
         1 * * * *  perl -I $PERL5LIB 
$KOHA_CRON_PATH/../migration_tools/rebuild_zebra.pl -b -a -z >/dev/null 2>&1
         #nightly
         0 0 * * * perl -I $PERL5LIB 
$KOHA_CRON_PATH/../migration_tools/merge_authority.pl -n -b >/dev/null 2>&1
         # is this a duplicate cron job? see 
/usr/share/koha/bin/cronjobs/crontab
         # This is my sanity check
         # * * * * *  date > ~/date.txt

Note the last three lines! I had obviously struggled with the same thought 
that you express here "looks like you have mucked up your cron set up"

But it works ... as do all the other @hourly, @boot, etc.  Ubuntu 
specific?  I jumped from Slackware to Ubuntu more than 5 years ago, and do 
not have enough knowledge of other modern Linux o/s's

Best - Paul

>Chris
>
>Paul <paul.a at aandc.org> wrote:
>
>At 06:30 PM 7/28/2012 -0400, Jared Camins-Esakov wrote:
> >[snip]
> >Did you try rerunning updatedatabase?
>
>Many thanks for the reply. Yes, but I ran
>paul at server2:/usr/share/koha/intranet/cgi-bin/installer/data/mysql$ perl -I
>updatedatabase.pl overnight - it only took a few minutes when initiated by
>Koha after the install. If I've made an error, could you please assist with
>the syntax?
>
>Also, Chris N. suggested "Also double check to be sure that OpacMaintenance
>did not get set somehow" -- it was set (not sure how - I didn't even
>realize that this preference existed) and now the OPAC is up and running.
>Thanks Chris.
>
> >The instructions all assume a user crontab. If you are using
> >/etc/cron.d/koha, you should not be using the user crontab (as all the
> >instr
>  uctions
>assume), or you could do things vice versa.
>
>Hidden in a corner under the name 'root' I finally found it, and the cron
>is now working perfectly (except 'mail', see below).  For the archives:
>
>$ cd /var/spool/cron
>$ sudo chmod 755 crontabs
>$ sudo vi root
>          [change 5 mins to 1 min]
>:x
>$ cd ..
>$ sudo chmod 1770 crontabs
>
> >So, remove nullmailer. nullmailer needs to be configured appropriately if
> >you are using it.
>
>Done, and get (once a minute) syslog entries:
>Jul 29 13:38:01 server2 CRON[1854]: (CRON) info (No MTA installed,
>discarding output)
>
>which was why I was asking if there was an easy way of "turning it off" in
>Koha (I've looked unsuccessfully for a global O/S method to turn off
>"warnings) - I don't need an email every minute, 24/7 :-} -- and I'd like
>to reinstall nullmailer to verify all the "wanted" patron emails (no
>intention of
>installing sendmail on this sandbox; on the production server
>I've got sendmail to selectively dev/null unwanted messages.)
>
>Many thanks all around.  I'll continue comparing this to our production
>box, and get some of our cataloguers to have a look over the next few
>days.  As and when we come up with more bits and pieces, I'll have a look
>at helping with the Wiki page -- Tomas, I see that you have done all the
>editing, but have a blank "talk" page.  Would you prefer to email (either
>on- or off-list) or use the "talk page"?
>
>Regards -- Paul
>
>
>
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