FreeBSD 12 cron Jobs Stop Running Due to Crontab Ownership Drift

📖 ~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 tasks are skipped, breaking backups and maintenance routines.

Environment & Reproduction

Often occurs after manual file restore into cron spool.

service cron status

Root Cause Analysis

Invalid ownership/mode in spool files causes cron to ignore entries.

Quick Triage

Check cron logs and spool metadata.

grep -i cron /var/log/messages | tail -100

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Validate permissions in /var/cron/tabs and user entries.

ls -la /var/cron/tabs

Solution – Primary Fix

Restore proper ownership/modes and reload cron daemon.

sudo chown -R root:wheel /var/cron/tabs && sudo chmod 600 /var/cron/tabs/* && sudo service cron restart

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Migrate critical jobs to periodic(8) with monitored exit reporting.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Next scheduled runs execute and logs confirm task completion.

Rollback Plan

Restore previous crontab backups and daemon settings.

Prevention & Hardening

Manage crontabs via controlled tooling, not direct file edits.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Associated with timezone drift and PATH misconfiguration in cron.

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

cron(8), crontab(5), and operational runbook references.