crontab not working

[m3mary]

hello
yesterday i tried crontab it was working but now not working
i want to use it in automatic copying + do backups

[Terra]

Couple things:

1) There is no cronjob in the server for your username, which leads to #2

2) Whatever crontab file you are trying to inject has a syntax error:
Change: Mailto:<your_email_address>
to: MAILTO=<your_email_address>

Replace "<your_email_address>" with your email address and without the gator signs...

[m3mary]

for example im trying to test this
crontab -l
MAILTO=myemail@hotmail.com
24 * * * * zip -r zip.zip /big/dom/xuser/user/file.txt


this line (zip -r zip.zip /big/dom/xuser/user/file.txt) working fine without crontab.
but with crontab nothings happens

[m3mary]

and also which time should i use :
Local Time
GMT/UTC Time

[Kevin]

1) You should use the server's local time. Use the date command to see what it is.

2) Put a path on the zip.zip so that zip will know where to put it.

[m3mary]

MAILTO=user@hotmail.com
24 * * * * zip -r /big/dom/xuser/user/zip.zip /big/dom/xuser/user/file.txt

not working also

[Kevin]

Are you getting an error message in your email?

Also, *:24 hasn't happened since I posted.

[m3mary]

nothing in email so i changed the email also but nothing
no errors no OK

Yesterday i got messages and it worked

[Kevin]

OK, I think I have this figured out...

I am pretty sure that it would have just worked if you hadn't changed the job 2 minutes early. Here is the server log:

2008-10-06 02:22:00.124690500 bcron-sched: Reloading 'm3mary'
2008-10-06 02:24:00.126648500 bcron-sched: Warning: Ignoring unparseable line: '* 24 * * * zip -r /big/dom/xm3mary/m3mary/zip.zip /big/dom/xm3mary/m3mary/file.txt'

Note that at 02:22 you changed it from "24 *" to "* 24". "24 *" meant run it at 24 minutes past each hour. A time that didn't happen during the time it was set that way. "* 24" on the other hand would mean 24:00 which is not a valid time (midnight is 0:00).

[Kevin]

And I see you have now changed it to "12 *" which means run at 12 minutes past each hour.

Also, you may as well use /usr/bin/zip instead of zip just to make sure every possible issue is covered.