[12.04] crontab -e is not showing PATH in the example, so the example with tar will fail

[Michael Basse]

crontab -e is showing

#
# Each task to run has to be defined through a single line
# indicating with different fields when the task will be run
# and what command to run for the task
#
# To define the time you can provide concrete values for
# minute (m), hour (h), day of month (dom), month (mon),
# and day of week (dow) or use '*' in these fields (for 'any').#
# Notice that tasks will be started based on the cron's system
# daemon's notion of time and timezones.
#
# Output of the crontab jobs (including errors) is sent through
# email to the user the crontab file belongs to (unless redirected).
#
# For example, you can run a backup of all your user accounts
# at 5 a.m every week with:
# 0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/
#
# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)
#
# m h dom mon dow command

There is no line with PATH but in the example tar is used (instead of /bin/tar), so the example should be include PATH or /bin/tar instead of tar

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: cron 3.0pl1-120ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-38.61-generic 3.2.37
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-38-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.1
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Mar 6 06:01:04 2013
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: cron
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2013-01-15 (49 days ago)

[Michael Basse (michael-alpha-unix)]

see also

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cron/+bug/1081379

[Christian Kastner (ckk)]

The man page for crontab(5) states that PATH is initialized with /usr/bin:/bin, so the tar invocation in the example is correct. Or did I misunderstand your question?

[Michael Basse (michael-alpha-unix)]

Hi Christian,
i think it was my fault. I thought that the PATH should be in the file crontab -e is editing. As it seems cron itself is using the path somewhere because its definitely on in the crontab -e file

[Christian Kastner (ckk)]

OK, closing then. Thank you for your quick reply!