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Cron Job Not Running? A Checklist to Run Before Blaming cron

A cron job that works in a terminal can fail under a different account, shell or environment. Use this checklist to determine whether the scheduler ran it and where the failure occurred.
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If a cron job appears not to run, first find out whether the scheduler attempted it. Confirm the installed crontab, schedule and host clock, then check the daemon’s logs and capture the command’s output. If there is evidence of a launch, the problem is usually in the command, its execution account or its environment—not the schedule.

Commands, service names and log locations differ among Cronie, Debian cron, systemd-cron and other implementations. The checks below are deliberately portable; use your system’s manual for implementation-specific details.

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1. Confirm the entry is in the right crontab

A crontab belongs to an account unless it is a system crontab. Inspect the table for the account that should run the job, and make sure you edited that same account’s table. On a host using Cronie, user tables are kept separately from system entries in /etc/crontab and /etc/cron.d/; the exact layout depends on the implementation. See the Cronie crontab manual and cron daemon manual.

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System crontab entries include a username between the schedule and command; personal crontabs do not. An extra or missing username can make an otherwise plausible line parse incorrectly. Cronie’s crontab(5) manual describes the five time/date fields followed by a command and says entries are examined every minute.

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Check when the schedule actually matches

Work out the next matching minute, hour, day and month, then compare it with the machine’s clock and effective time zone—not just the time shown on your laptop. A valid schedule may simply not have reached its next run. Daylight-saving changes can skip a nonexistent local time or repeat a time; behavior depends on the cron implementation. The Cronie manuals describe these scheduling details for Cronie, but they should not be assumed to apply identically everywhere.

2. Check whether the scheduler is active and logged an attempt

Identify which scheduler the host uses, then inspect that scheduler’s service status and logs. Cronie commonly uses a daemon named crond; other systems may use cron or a compatibility service. There is no single service-status command or log path that is correct for all of them. Check the host’s service manager and the applicable daemon manual before choosing a command.

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  • No launch evidence: verify the daemon or compatibility service is running, the entry is installed in the intended table, and the schedule matches the host’s clock and time zone.
  • A scheduler log reports an attempt: the scheduler likely reached the entry; inspect command output and execution conditions next.
  • No output despite a reported attempt: configure an explicit output destination and check whether mail, syslog or journal reporting is available.

3. Verify the execution account and file access

For entries in /etc/crontab or /etc/cron.d/, check the username field as well as the schedule. For a personal crontab, check which account owns the table. Then verify that account can read the script and its inputs, traverse every parent directory, execute the interpreter and required programs, and write to the output locations.

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Cronie also imposes rules on the crontab file itself: it must be a regular file or a symlink to one, and generally must not be executable or writable by other users. That restriction is about the crontab file, not a blanket instruction to change the script’s permissions. Avoid broad permission changes; grant only the access the job needs.

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4. Recreate cron’s smaller environment

A command that works in a terminal may depend on shell startup files, environment variables or a working directory that cron does not provide. POSIX specifies at least HOME, LOGNAME, PATH and SHELL for a cron command, with sh as its specified shell. See the POSIX crontab environment. Use absolute paths for the script and its executables, and define only the environment values the job requires.

To expose hidden assumptions, run the command as the scheduled account with a deliberately small environment. Compare that result with the cron run, and check the actual values of HOME, PATH and SHELL rather than relying on what your interactive session loads.

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Environment-file behavior can be implementation-specific

In Debian testing’s systemd-cron 2.8.1-3 manual, SHELL defaults to /bin/sh, and crontab settings can override SHELL and PATH. That implementation reads environment assignments from top to bottom and does not expand other variables in them, so PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH does not work like a shell assignment there. Do not generalize this behavior to other cron implementations; consult the host’s own manual.

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5. Check shell syntax and crontab parsing

Cronie runs the command portion with /bin/sh unless SHELL selects another shell. If the script uses Bash-only syntax, invoke Bash explicitly or configure the shell for that entry. A script’s shebang and the shell used to interpret the crontab command are separate considerations.

Two further checks apply specifically to Cronie: an unescaped % in a command becomes a newline, with text after the first percent sign supplied as standard input; and each crontab entry must end in a newline. Without that final newline, Cronie may treat the file as partly broken and log a warning. Check the relevant implementation’s manual before relying on these parsing rules elsewhere.

6. Make output and errors visible

While diagnosing, redirect both standard output and standard error to a persistent log at an absolute path the scheduled account can write. For example, a personal crontab entry can end with >> /absolute/path/cron-job.log 2>&1. Choose a log location with suitable access and rotation; a growing file can eventually consume disk space.

POSIX says unredirected output and errors are mailed through an implementation-defined method. Cronie documents mail to the crontab owner or a MAILTO recipient, as well as syslog options. Debian systemd-cron documents different mail behavior, including failure mail that can contain systemctl status and journal output. Mail is not guaranteed to arrive: local mail delivery may not be configured. Check the scheduler’s system log or journal and the explicit output file you configured.

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7. If the command launched, debug its dependencies

A timestamped output file, journal entry or mail confirming launch changes the diagnosis: stop editing the schedule until you understand the command’s own error. Check for relative-path and working-directory assumptions, missing configuration or secrets, unavailable mounts or network resources, locks, runtime-version differences and the application’s exit status. These are possibilities to investigate, not proof that any one is the cause.

  • “Command not found”: check PATH, absolute executable paths and the shell.
  • “Permission denied” or “No such file”: check the execution identity and access to every path component.
  • An application error appears: troubleshoot its inputs, runtime and dependencies; the scheduler may already be doing its job.

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