Cron Jobs Not Running Under Expected Environment

📖 ~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

Cron executes with a minimal environment, causing scripts that work interactively to fail silently.

Environment & Reproduction

Scheduled tasks do not produce expected output and mail logs show command not found errors.

Root Cause Analysis

System and user crontab jobs relying on PATH, shell profile variables, or relative paths.

Quick Triage

Access to crontab, script logs, and mail output for cron execution context.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

[image_ref: 0] Run service cron status; crontab -l; grep cron /var/log/messages; execute script with env -i /bin/sh -c.

Solution – Primary Fix

[image_ref: 1] Ensure absolute paths in commands and define PATH, SHELL, and required variables at top of crontab.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Update crontab entries with full command paths, redirect stdout and stderr to logs, and restart cron with service cron restart if needed.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Next scheduled run completes and expected artifacts appear with no new cron errors.

Rollback Plan

Reinstall previous crontab from backup and disable only the problematic entry temporarily.

Prevention & Hardening

Wrap jobs in controlled shell scripts with explicit environment declarations.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Escalate when filesystem permissions or account lock policies block cron execution globally.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for freebsd-14.

View all freebsd-14 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

cron(8), crontab(5), sh(1), FreeBSD system logging guidance.