How to check if cron is working on Ubuntu 20.04?

Posted on May 18, 2021

I am trying to test a cron job.

When I run crontab -l the output is:

*/1 * * * * curl https://www.google.com >> /home/log/crontest.log 2>&1

I also have the following to set cron log in the /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf:

cron.*	/var/log/cron.log

And created a file /var/log/cron.log and /home/log/crontest.log.

I restarted the system, sudo service rsyslog restart.

But nothing is logged.

Q1. Is there any way that I can test if the corn is working? Q2. What could be the reasons that the cronjob is not working?

This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

alexdo

May 18, 2021

Accepted Answer

Hello, @okadashinichi2819

You can manually execute the cron job command in your shell and check for any errors. If the cron is executed fine then it should work when configured to run at specific times.

You can also check our tutorial on how to setup cron jobs:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-cron-to-automate-tasks-ubuntu-1804

You can also use sites like this one to generate the exact time format for you: