🟡 Medium   ⏱ 5–30 min  Last verified: 19 May 2026
Affected versions: FreeBSD 12

📖 ~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 root maintenance tasks stop executing, causing backups, cleanup jobs, and health checks to be skipped.

Environment & Reproduction

After host migration, crontab entries exist but expected output files and script actions no longer appear.

Root Cause Analysis

Incorrect crontab permissions, DOS line endings, missing PATH, or disabled cron service are common migration side effects.

Quick Triage

Check service cron onestatus, inspect /var/log/cron, and validate root crontab syntax with crontab -l.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Verify environment variables and shell assumptions used by scripts launched from cron context. image_ref=0

Illustrative mockup for freebsd-12 — terminal_or_shell
Checking cron daemon status and crontab entries — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Primary Fix

Normalize line endings, set explicit PATH and shell in crontab, then restart cron service. image_ref=1

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Illustrative mockup for freebsd-12 — log_or_config
Reviewing cron logs and file permissions — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Move critical automation to periodic scripts under /etc/periodic for standardized execution behavior.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Jobs execute on schedule, expected logs are generated, and non-zero exit statuses are alerted appropriately.

Rollback Plan

Restore previous crontab snapshot and script versions if recent edits introduce further execution failures.

Prevention & Hardening

Add cron canary jobs, monitor last-run timestamps, and enforce script lint checks before deployment.

Associated issues include missing mailx notifications, permission denied script errors, and stale lock files.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for freebsd-12.

View all freebsd-12 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

Consult man crontab, man cron, and FreeBSD periodic task framework documentation.

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