/var/www/mrtg does not exist, so cron output is mailed every 5 minutes

[Kenyon Ralph]

Binary package hint: mrtg

See: http://bugs.debian.org/527315

The above bug also affects Ubuntu Jaunty.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: mrtg 2.16.2-3ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: mrtg
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-12-generic i686

[Kenyon Ralph (kralph)]

This didn't occur in the intrepid version of mrtg. I see differences in /etc/cron.d/mrtg between the two versions, so the problem likely exists there.

[Kenyon Ralph (kralph)]

Here is /etc/cron.d/mrtg from intrepid:

*/5 * * * * root if [ -d /var/lock/mrtg ]; then if [ -x /usr/bin/mrtg ] && [ -r /etc/mrtg.cfg ]; then env LANG=C /usr/bin/mrtg /etc/mrtg.cfg >> /var/log/mrtg/mrtg.log 2>&1; fi else mkdir /var/lock/mrtg; fi

And from jaunty:

*/5 * * * * root if [ ! -d /var/lock/mrtg ]; then mkdir /var/lock/mrtg; fi; if [ -x /usr/bin/mrtg ] && [ -r /etc/mrtg.cfg ]; then env LANG=C /usr/bin/mrtg /etc/mrtg.cfg 2>&1 | tee -a /var/log/mrtg/mrtg.log ; fi

It looks like these are both intended to have the same effects, so I don't know why it was changed, but the jaunty one causes output, which cron emails. The emails look like this:

Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:10:05 -0700
From: Cron Daemon
To: root
Subject: Cron <root@localhost> if [ ! -d /var/lock/mrtg ]; then mkdir /var/lock/mrtg;
     fi; if [ -x /usr/bin/mrtg ] && [ -r /etc/mrtg.cfg ]; then env LANG=C
    /usr/bin/mrtg /etc/mrtg.cfg 2>&1 | tee -a /var/log/mrtg/mrtg.log ; fi

ERROR: CFG Error in "workdir", line 8: Working directory /var/www/mrtg does not exist

On intrepid, these error messages would instead go only to /var/log/mrtg/mrtg.log.

[Mahyuddin Susanto (udienz)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. However, I am closing it because the bug has been fixed in the latest development version of Ubuntu - Raring Ringtail.

If you need a fix for the bug in previous versions of Ubuntu, please follow the instructions for "Requesting a Backport" at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBackports#Requesting_a_Backport