FreeBSD 12 – periodic daily jobs do not run because cron service is disabled

📖 ~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

Periodic maintenance and security checks are silently skipped.

Environment & Reproduction

Detected by stale daily logs and missing housekeeping outputs.

Root Cause Analysis

cron is disabled in rc.conf or not running after system changes.

Quick Triage

Verify cron enable flag, process state, and crontab presence.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Review message logs and periodic configuration controls.

Solution – Primary Fix

Enable/start cron and run catch-up periodic tasks.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Use a dedicated scheduler for custom jobs while keeping periodic baseline.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Scheduled jobs execute and logs update on expected cadence.

Rollback Plan

Disable added scheduler components and revert to baseline setup.

Prevention & Hardening

Alert when periodic logs are older than policy threshold.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Often coexists with log rotation growth and stale pkg audit data.

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, periodic, and rc.conf sections in FreeBSD Handbook.