Question

27

How can I tell if my hourly cron job has run?

rated 0 times [ 27] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 141346 / 1 Year ago, wed, february 1, 2023, 1:28:03

I have created a file called ntpdate in /etc/cron.hourly

#!/bin/sh

/usr/sbin/ntpdate-debian

date > /tmp/william_tmp

date > /william_tmp

date > ~/william_tmp

echo test

I also did Chmod 755 to this file.

However, I can't tell if the file has run or not!

The file is not created in any of the 3 directories.

If I manually run cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly then the files are created and I get the echo.

Can anyone recommend (ideally step by step!) instructions to test that it is working?

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eryeath

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2 Years ago

answered 1 Year ago sweetrifiabl · Accepted Answer

One major pitfall to cron is cron runs in an extremely limited shell environment, as a result a lot of variables aren't exported in to the environment, mainly $PATH. Make sure you use all absolute paths to executable, including common functions like echo, uptime, date, etc all need to use full paths (/bin/echo, /bin/date, /usr/bin/uptime). To determine the path to an executable, you can use the which command like so: which echo - this will show you the full path to that tool.