Randy Edwards: > I've got a newbie-type question for anyone kind enough to answer. This > morning I got a message from my cron which told me the following (header cut > down a bit for brevity): > > >> From: root (Cron Daemon) > >> To: root > >> Subject: Cron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> run-parts /etc/cron.weekly > >> > >> Terminal not powerful enough for SLang. > > What's this mean? And what is SLang? Man and apropos doesn't seem to > turn up anything for it and I don't have a clue. Any information would be > greatly appreciated, thanks.
Slang is a library which provides a scripting language and some screen drawing functions (similar to ncurses, if you're familiar with it). The error comes up when slang thinks the terminal it's running at doesn't support the escape sequences needed to move the cursor around the screen, set color, listen for keystrokes, etc. In this case, a program that uses slang appears to be running as a cron job in /etc/cron.weekly, and since cron doesn't actually give it a terminal to connect to, it's not suprising that it gives this message. What I don't understand is what program that uses slang is geing run as a cron job? That's really weird. You need to track down which of the scripts in /etc/cron.weekly/ is causing the error, and correct the problem. One good way to do this is to edit /etc/crontab - there will be a line like this (some of the numbers are different on a standard debian system): 21 0 * * 7 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly Add --verbose after the run-parts, and then run-parts should print out the name of each script in /etc/cron.weekly as it runs it, and you'll be able to tell which script is generating the error. I haven't tried this, hope it actually works. :-) Oh no - I think I might know what package is causing this problem, and unfortunatly, I maintain it :-/. Do you have slrn installed? Does /etc/slrnget.conf contain the following lines setting variables =y? This could very well be the problem, becuase slrn is a slang application. USE_SLRNPULL=y GETDESC_WITH_CRONJOB=y -- see shy jo, slrn maintainer -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .