Thanks for the reply,
I don't have ssmtp set up yet, so I took your suggestion and tried redirecting
env and ssh -v output to a file. Actually I did this both from the
Administrator's command line, and from the Administrator's crontab creating two
seperate files (attached) so I could compare.
From the command line I ran these two commands:
/usr/bin/env testcron.admin.txt
ssh -v baby ls 2 testcron.admin.txt
From Administrator's crontab I did this:
34 08 * * * /usr/bin/env testcron.cron.txt
36 08 * * * ssh -v baby ls 2 testcron.cron.txt
In comparing the output for the env command, I see that Administrator's
environment contains more environmet varibales, most notably those created by
ssh-agent, which is started by keychain in Administrator's ~/.bash_profile
SSH_AGENT_PID=517
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-AhbAu553/agent.553
I also note that the $PATH variable for Administrator is prepended with Cygwin's
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin: while it is *not* in the cron/system
environment. i.e.
For Administrator:
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/c/WINNT/system32:/c/WINNT: etc...
For cron/system:
PATH=/c/WINNT/system32:/c/WINNT: etc ...
I'm assuming this is not the culprit however, since the ssh command *is* found
even though the full path to it is not provided in the crontab. Is this because
the Administrator's $PATH is being used due to context switching?
In comparing the debug output from ssh -v, I see that when run from the command
line as Administrator, publickey auth succeeds, but fails when run from cron. i.e.
# From command line:
#
debug1: authentications that can continue: publickey,password,keyboard-interactive
debug1: next auth method to try is publickey
debug1: userauth_pubkey_agent: testing agent key /home/Administrator/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: input_userauth_pk_ok: pkalg ssh-rsa blen 149 lastkey 0x100cdae0 hint -1
debug1: ssh-userauth2 successful: method publickey
debug1: fd 6 setting O_NONBLOCK
debug1: channel 0: new [client-session]
debug1: send channel open 0
debug1: Entering interactive session.
# From cron:
#
debug1: authentications that can continue: publickey,password,keyboard-interactive
debug1: next auth method to try is publickey
debug1: try privkey: /home/Administrator/.ssh/identity
debug1: try pubkey: /home/Administrator/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: input_userauth_pk_ok: pkalg ssh-rsa blen 149 lastkey 0x100c4548 hint 1
debug1: PEM_read_PrivateKey failed
debug1: read PEM private key done: type unknown
It seems to me (in my newbie terminlogy) that either the cron/system environment
needs to become aware of and use the Administrator's public key via
Administrator's SSH_AGENT and SSH_AUTH_SOCK env variables, or that the SYSTEM
user needs to have it's own public key avalable for use. I don't know how to
proceed along either of these paths. Any help is much appreciated.
Harig, Mark A. wrote:
Of course, a simpler alternative to setting up
'ssmtp' with cron would be to write your
cron job to redirect the output of 'ssh -v ...'
to a file.
-Original Message-
From: Harig, Mark A.
Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 3:40 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: Can cron run ssh commands?
Try adding '-v' to your ssh command in your cron job.
This assumes that you have cron's integration with
email working. If you don't have the 'ssmtp' package
installed (via setup.exe), then you'll want to do that
so that any output is emailed to you.
See: /usr/doc/Cygwin/
cron.README
ssmtp-version.README
Of course, you should probably start with a simpler
cron job, say, the output of '/usr/bin/env' so that
you can see what cron thinks its environment is.
-Original Message-
From: Nathan Barham [mailto:nathan;sleepygeek.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2002 3:09 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Can cron run ssh commands?
Hello all,
I'm trying to use Cygwin to rsync between an NT 4 server and
a Win2K server,
using the -e ssh option to rsync. It works beautifully at
the command line
like this:
rsync -e ssh -trzv --delete /d/winapps/
Administrator@baby:/c/winapps
My problem is that this won't work from cron, nor will any of
the other Openssh
tools (scp, ssh etc). I have Cygwin sshd running as
Administrator on the remote
W2K box, i.e.*without* privsep. I have Cygwin cron running
as SYSTEM on the
local NT 4 box. I've tested cron and it works except for ssh
stuff. I also
have ssh-agent loaded on the local box (via keychain), and I
can ssh to the
remote box as Administrator without typing a passphrase.
I'm pretty sure my problem is related to permissions of the
SYSTEM user and/or
the switching of user context, but I can't figure out what to
change. I've read
the user guide and FAQ, googled, and searched the mail
archives, but if it's
there I'm missing it. Has anyone out there managed to
automate ssh commands
from cron? If so can you please enlighten me, or at least
kick me in the
direction of self-enlightment
