How to find out why my cron didn't run?

Asked Jul 25 '14 at 10:07

Active Jul 25 '14 at 10:07

Viewed 32 times

This is the content of root's crontab:

0       23      *       *       0-4     /usr/sbin/rtcwake -time `date --date="+16 hours" +"%s"` -m mem

This is set to fire off that command every Sun-Thu at 11pm. The command is essentially a suspend for the next 16 hours while I'm at work to save power. I've test the command with smaller times (30, 60 seconds) and it works. However, when I wake up in the morning and check my machine, it's still running.

Here's what's in the logs:

Jul 24 23:00:01 gallactica CRON[5033]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/rtcwake -time `date --date="+16 hours" +")

So does this mean it ran? Why didn't it actually work?

asked Jul 25 '14 at 10:07

nopcorn

9,559

That log entry means it ran. Although the log line seems incomplete at the end (copy&paste problem?). If the command produced any output, the user who owns the crontab (root in this case) would have gotten an email – Celada Jul 25 '14 at 10:25
I am wondering whether the %s in the command has been mangled by printf in the log, and maybe in the actual command that was executed too to cause it to fail. – Michael Homer Jul 25 '14 at 10:45
@MichaelHomer that makes sense actually. Tonight I'm going to try dumping this line into a separate file instead. I don't think it was a copy paste problem so this seems like the most probably cause. – nopcorn Jul 25 '14 at 10:46
2

See How can I execute date inside of a cron tab job? – steeldriver Jul 25 '14 at 10:51
@steeldriver yup that looks like it may be my issue. I'll give it a try, thanks. – nopcorn Jul 25 '14 at 10:53

How to find out why my cron didn't run?

0 Answers0