Cron job not running on specified time

cron

I've a cron job that should run every day at 1700 hours from Saturday to Sunday. However, it runs on the system at 0100 hours instead.

The schedule descriptor string used to define the table for this particular job in question is: 0 17 * * 0-6

The system on which this crontab exists is CentOS 5.2 with ISC Cron V4.1 running on it. I did, recently, change the timezone on the system from PDT to BST by creating a symbolic link at /etc/localtime pointing to /usr/share/zoneinfo/GB. However, I do not believe that to have caused this problem as I remember the cron job running at 0100 hours before.

Any insights? I'd appreciate any help I could get on this. Thank you.

Best Answer

Crond is likely still in the old timezone, restart it (from a shell with the right timezone) to pick up the new TZ variable.

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Cron Job – How to Run a Cron Job Manually and Immediately

Here's what I did, and it seems to work in this situation. At least, it shows me an error, whereas running from the command line as the user doesn't show the error.

Step 1: I put this line temporarily in the user's crontab:

* * * * *   /usr/bin/env > /home/username/tmp/cron-env

then took it out once the file was written.

Step 2: Made myself a little run-as-cron bash script containing:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/env -i $(cat /home/username/tmp/cron-env) "$@"

So then, as the user in question, I was able to

run-as-cron /the/problematic/script --with arguments --and parameters

This solution could obviously be expanded to make use of sudo or such for more flexibility.

Hope this helps others.

Cron Job – Fix for Daylight Saving Issue Causing Multiple Executions

I'd use Ockham's Razor with this. It's bound to be the Summer Time clock changes.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Cron Job – How to Run a Cron Job Manually and Immediately

Cron Job – Fix for Daylight Saving Issue Causing Multiple Executions

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