Cron Jobs Not Running on Schedule

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents

1. Symptom & Impact
2. Environment & Reproduction
3. Root Cause Analysis
4. Quick Triage
5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
6. Solution – Primary Fix
7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
9. Rollback Plan
10. Prevention & Hardening
11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Scheduled maintenance scripts do not run and expected outputs are missing.

Environment & Reproduction

cron disabled, invalid crontab syntax, environment/path assumptions, or permission issues.

Root Cause Analysis

Check service cron status and list jobs with crontab -l for the target user.

Quick Triage

Enable and start cron, then run job commands manually with full paths.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Use service cron onestatus and execute the exact crontab command line manually.

Solution – Primary Fix

Inspect /var/log/cron or mail output for syntax errors and command failures.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Correct schedule fields, set PATH explicitly, and use absolute script locations.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Trigger near-term test schedule and verify expected artifacts are created.

Rollback Plan

Log all cron jobs and alert on missed execution windows.

Prevention & Hardening

Restore previous crontab from backup and re-test each job entry.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Escalate if system clock or cron daemon instability causes repeated missed runs.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for freebsd-15.

View all freebsd-15 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

service cron restart; crontab -l; crontab -e; date