Why won't crontab jobs pick up my environment variables?

[TrogL]

I figure it's because they're in .profile and crontab uses sh.

How do I talk it into using ksh? Where do I set my environment variables?

[The Traveler]

1. Dammit ... let me know if you get an answer to that one!

Always wound up having to wrap things in scripts that set the environment variables. Tedious.

[necso]

2. SHELL

is pretty much a standard crontab environment variable. (Also standard are USER --or the same thing in another form-- and HOME).

You should be able to set environment variables directly in the crontab itself, but try it and see if it works.

I typically keep a bunch of script templates handy and customize them for any need. I actually like to be able to change cron operation without changing the crontab, so I use scripts for everything. But this is a matter of taste.

http://www.linux-mag.com/2003-02/power_03.html has a few examples and a brief discussion.