Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Issue

  • If a cron job is failing or more information is needed, how can cron be configured to run in debug mode for more detailed logging?

Resolution

The crond daemon has an -x option that allows you to set debug flags.

crond -x [ext,sch,proc,pars,load,misc,test,bit]

ext   print extended debugging information
sch   scheduling
proc  process control
pars  parsing
load  database loading
misc  miscellaneous
test  test mode - do not actually execute any commands
bit   show how various bits are set (long)
  1. Add the following line to the /etc/sysconfig/crond file to enable debugging:

CRONDARGS="-x ext,sch,proc,pars,load,misc,bit"

  1. Restart the crond daemon.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

$ sudo service crond restart > /dev/null 2>&1 &

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 or later

$ sudo systemctl restart crond

Root Cause

Debug flags are not configured by default for the crond daemon. They must be configured in order to use them.