Important Technote on Cron for Virtual I/O Server with Fix Pack 8

This technote describes how to use cron function in the padmin shell on a VIO server in Fix pack 8.

The cron function was introduced to the padmin shell in VIOS 1.3 (fix pack 8). However, many commands fail when run from cron, even though they work when run from the CLI. Failing commands include mount and backupios.

This is because /home/padmin/.profile is an important part of the CLI, changing the path and aliasing many commands. cron does not read a user's .profile, and so the commands fail. This is working as designed.

To enable cron to run commands in the same way as the CLI, the command should start with /usr/ios/cli/ioscli For example: /usr/ios/cli/ioscli mount nimserver:/export /mnt /usr/ios/cli/ioscli backupios -file /mnt/vios_backup -mksysb