Ubuntu – Adding file to /etc/cron.d doesn’t make it run (ubuntu 10.04)

cronUbuntu

If I scp a cron file into /etc/cron.d it doesn't run unless I edit the file and change the command. Then crond seems to pick up the cron file.

How can I make cron reload its cron files in ubuntu 10.04? 'touch'ing the file doesn't work nor does 'restart cron' or 'reload cron'.

My cron file is set to run every minute and logs to a file. Nothing ends up in the log file until I edit the command, and there's no entry for it in /var/log/syslog

I'm stumped.

Here's my cron file saved to /etc/cron.d/runscript (note it ends with a new line)

# Runs the script every minute. This is safe because it will exit with success if it's already running
* * * * * www-data if [ -f /usr/local/bin/thing ]; then exec /usr/bin/php /usr/local/bin/thing mode:prod -a 14 -d >> /var/log/thing/mything.log 2>&1; else echo `date +'[\%D \%T]'` "Thing not deployed. Command not run" >> /var/log/thing/mything.log; fi &

Best Answer

I've just run into this problem and whilst it will not answer your specific case, it may well help other people googling the same problem as this question returns very high in the results.

I had saved a file in /etc/cron.d and it was being ignored. In my case it was because I had given the files an extension.

mytask.cron did not work but I renamed it to mytask and it worked fine.

Any files with extensions are ignored, so make sure your file that you save does not have any extension.

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