did cron job run

[kaykav]

Hi
I've been trying to understand man pages,unsuccessfully. I would like to know what command I can use to determine when ,if at all, my scheduled cron job was run.
my crontab entry is; 35 * * * * /home/kaykav/bin/ups.sh .So my script should run at 35 mins after every hour. How do I know if it runs as scheduled? thanks..

[Pilosopong Tasyo]

At the moment there are at least two ways I can think of to add some interactive feedback:

(1) Modify your shell script to create a log file in your home directory. For example, add the following at the end of the script:

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echo `date` >> ~/ups.sh.log

The command will save the date and time to a log file in the home directory. Note the quotes used in the date command are BACKQUOTES (symbol below the tilde key) and not SINGLE QUOTATION MARKS.

(2) If you have the libnotify-bin package installed you can use the notify-send command to alert you on-screen if the script has run its course. Just like in the previous method, you'll have to modify the script and add the following piece of code:

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notify-send -t 0 "Crontab Alert" "ups.sh finished running `date`"

The -t 0 switch tells notify-send to display a pop-up box at the center of the screen instead of a 10-second OSD at the upper right portion. Click OK or Cancel to dismiss the pop-up.

If you want to do a quick test, use a shorter delay -- say, 5 minutes -- instead of 35 in your cron table.

HTH.

[kaykav]

Thank you, Pilosopong Tasyo, for that info. Actually I did think of adding a date cmd >to a file. I didn't know about the notify entry. I'll use it. Thank you again....