An update:

>> [snip]
> We've all been newbies. I don't mind beginners' questions posted here,
> not at all.

Thanks. I'm sure I will have more questions as time goes by. Although I
see mostly experienced people on the list, I'm sure the list will grow,
and maybe by that time I will be an expert, have pity on the newbies,
and will help them out. ; )

> [snip] That version was released in April, more than six months ago.
> We've improved curl a lot since.

At least including versions in major OS releases introduces people like
me to new stuff. I would have never tried cURL had it not been included.

I did, however, download the new version of cURL. I tried doing the
"./configure", "make", "make test" thing, but came up with most tests
failing, much like my first year at college.

> Haven't we all been through that once or twice in our lives? ;-) It is
> *usually* a matter of environment. Check your HOME, PATH, TERM
> variables when
> invoked from crontab...

When I read this, I thought you were on to something. I thought about it
before, but dismissed it..mostly because I was not sure how to change
it, and the fact that I was running the cron job under my account, I
/thought/ it would inherit my environment variables.

[snip]

> This certainly sounds odd. Are you somehow using information that is
> sent to stderr?

Not intentionally.

> [snip]
> My advice: use --stderr! ;-)

I thought of that, but I did use the wiggle phrase "seems to work." As I
was afraid, the --stderr trick was just a band-aid that did not work
reliably...seemed to work sometime, but caused other problems other
times.

I think I have found a solution, however. I went to www.macosxhints.com,
looked around, and found that I needed to do a "chmod 755
scriptname.pl." Then, I tried to figure out why (still don't understand
completely). But on page 36 of Aeleen Frisch's System Administration
book she jokingly says, "The first rule of thumb about any user problem
that comes up is: it's usually a file ownership or protection problem."
Well said...I'll be aware of that from now on.

--kevin
Received on 2001-11-01