Crontab FailureEmails - /bin/sh: 1 : ambiguous redirect

Crontab FailureEmails - /bin/sh: 1 : ambiguous redirect

Posted on Saturday,August 4, 2012

Crontab Failure Emails


The emails vary in subject line but include:

/bin/sh: 1 : ambiguous redirect - Cron <root@host>/usr/local/cpanel/bin/dcpumon >/dev/null 2>&1

/bin/sh: 1 : ambiguous redirect - Cron <root@host> /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/dnsqueue> /dev/null 2>&1

/bin/sh: 1 : ambiguous redirect - Cron <root@host>/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/cpremotetaskadmin > /dev/null 2>&1


Cause:

root's crontab at /var/spool/cron/root was modified outside Linux atsome point and corrupted for the line endings.

Problem Test:

Run the following conmmand.

# file /var/spool/cron/root

The output should be like this if there is no error with the file: /var/spool/cron/root: ASCII text

If you are getting an output like the folowing, the file is modified with someunsupported terminators.

/var/spool/cron/root:ASCII text, with CRLF, LF line terminators

Solution:

# strings /var/spool/cron/root > /var/spool/cron/root.tmp
# mv /var/spool/cron/root.tmp /var/spool/cron/root

Here, strings command convert the characters inthe file into unix readable format. So all the unsupported characters will besupported by unix.

Run the following command to test the problem is soved,
# file /var/spool/cron/root

/var/spool/cron/root:ASCII text

If you are getting the above output, the problem of getting cron failure emailssolved.

Note:- The problem can occur with any crontab files. So, if you have anyproblem with any other crontab files, you can solve then by the above method.
You can also use
# dos2unix-b /var/spool/cron/root
instead of strings command

This entry was posted in cPanel by Arun Ghosh. Bookmark the permalink.