Re: How to start and verify cron?

[David Karr <davidmichaelkarr at gmail dot com>]

On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 10:20 AM Brian Inglis <
Brian.Inglis@systematicsw.ab.ca> wrote:

> On 2019-07-10 10:55, David Karr wrote:
> > I've checked the user guide and the FAQ, and I can't find any information
> > about how to start cron and verify that it's working.  I found other blog
> > posts on other sites, but some of them are old.
>
> Did you run service setup script /bin/cron-config to set up the service?
>

When I ran that now, it says "Cron is already installed as a service under
account ...", so I assume that means that I did.


> > I had installed cron, and I thought it was working, but now I think that
> it
> > is not.  If I edit "~/crontab" and then run "crontab -l", it lists the
> > changes I've made to jobs, so at least that is working.  The real job I
> > have didn't appear to be doing what it was supposed to be doing, so I
> added
> > a new trivial job that just appends output from "date" to a file in my
> > homedir, and after the scheduled time of the job, the file was not
> created.
>
> Messages from cron and other active services should be visible in the
> Windows
> application event log if you have not set up a syslog service.
>

I went through it, but I didn't see any indications of issues with cron.
I'm not sure what to look for, or where in the event log interface.


> > This is the additional job I added:
> >
> >     40,42,44 * * * * date >> /home/<myuid>/date.txt
> >
> > I did find a "/var/log/cron.log", but it is empty, and the modtime is
> from
> > a few months ago.
> >
> > One blog post I found talks about running "cygrunsrv -I cron -p
> > /usr/sbin/cron -a -D". I just did this, and it reports "The specified
> > service already exists."
> >
> > This is my uname -a output:
> >
> >     CYGWIN_NT-6.1 ... 3.0.3(0.338/5/3) 2019-03-09 19:12 x86_64 Cygwi
> For a more Unix like and self contained Cygwin approach, install
> syslog-ng, run
> service setup scripts /bin/cygserver-config /bin/syslog-ng-config
> /bin/cron-config, add service dependencies to start up in that order, and
> you
> should see cron messages in /var/log/syslog if you run elevated: you can
> also
> run chmod elevated to make /var/log/syslog world readable, or setfacl to
> add
> user or group read ACLs.
>

How do I add service dependencies to start up in a particular order?


> --
> Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>
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