grokus's questions

Every hour I get an email with error like this,

Subject: Cron <root@supa> root    cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly

/bin/sh: root: not found

Contents of /etc/crontab is as follows, either I remove user "root" or not (6th column), I get the same error.

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

# m h dom mon dow user  command
11 *    * * *   root    cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
25 6    * * *   test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily )
47 6    * * 7   test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly )
52 6    1 * *   test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly )
#

There are two files in my cron.hourly directory,

$ ll /etc/cron.hourly/
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 2009-10-29 09:24 ntpsync -> /home/<user>/bin/ntpsync
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 2009-10-23 10:33 foo -> /home/<user>/bin/foo

First script reads as follows,

$ cat ~/bin/ntpsync
#!/usr/bin/env bash
echo "user: $USER"
if [[ "$USER" == "root" ]] ; then
    ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com
else
    sudo ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com
fi

Even I remove both scripts in my /etc/cron.hourly/ directory, I still get the same error email every hour. I tried to restart cron and I still get the same error email. The next idea I have is to reboot but I'd avoid that.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/cron restart

My Ubuntu version is as follows,

$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=8.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=hardy
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 8.04.1"

Update: I removed the 6th columns "root" from my /etc/crontab file earlier because when I searched online someone mentioned that could fix the problem. Now I think the problem was that I was messing around with the system crontab config instead of that of the root's.

$ sudo crontab -l
# m h  dom mon dow   command
17 *    * * *   root    cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
25 6    * * *   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily )
47 6    * * 7   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly )
52 6    1 * *   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly )

dpkg -L <package>

This command gives me a list of all the installed files, what's apt-get's equivalent option for it? I read the man page but couldn't figure out.

From outside of my house, whenever I login to my Ubuntu server using SSH, it takes about 6 seconds for me to get the prompt for password, however when I login to my web hosting server it takes about 1 second. What can I do to speed this up?

$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=8.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=hardy
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 8.04.1"
$ ssh -v
OpenSSH_4.7p1 Debian-8ubuntu1.2, OpenSSL 0.9.8g 19 Oct 2007
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
model name      : Dual-Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 1210
cpu MHz         : 1000.000
cache size      : 1024 KB
$ cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:      2074528 kB

I am running 8.04 desktop as a server and hosting my own web server, has anyone experienced any issues with upgrade from 8.04 to 10.04?