cron runs every minute

renelicious · n00b Joined: 27 Sep 2003 Posts: 18

I recently switched to vcron. It seem to be working great except that when I tail /var/log/messages, it seems to be running (or at least sending output to messages) every minute.

There is a line like these:

Decibels · Veteran Joined: 16 Aug 2002 Posts: 1623 Location: U.S.A.

You might want to post your crontab.
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dkaplowitz · Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2004 2:20 am Post subject:

dkaplowitz · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2004 10:05 pm Post subject:

bump... anyone know how to disable this annoying task from running every minute and filling up my /var/log/messages?

Thanks,

Dave
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RAPUL · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2004 10:11 pm Post subject: Try:

Line with * * * * * is the one executed every minute.

Try to change that line:

dkaplowitz · Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 12:23 am Post subject:

cool thanks. I didn't know you could edit that file manually. I commented it out.
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RAPUL · Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 12:28 am Post subject: Yes tou can...

Yes you can edit that file to plan some activities with a frequency different than hourly, daily or weekely.

This is my crontab:

LRdM · n00b Joined: 19 Jul 2003 Posts: 27

I have the same problem and I added 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null to the same line and reloaded vcron but it's still showing up in my logs.

Crontab:

glh · n00b Joined: 07 Mar 2004 Posts: 2

You must ensure that each cron line is truly /one/ line.

But, I would think that this redirection will not solve your problem. Usually, when a command run by cron has output, it will email it to the local user the command was run as, in this case "root".

The run-crons command that is being executed in turn executes any scripts in /etc/cron.[daily|hourly|etc] So, you don't want to comment the line out or delete it.

The syslog messages you are seeing are most likely debug messages from the cron daemon because of how it was compiled. My system does the same (vixie-cron and syslog-ng), so it seems the maintainers or developers of vixie-cron decided that this logging was a good thing.

I'm with you; I find it to be noisy. But, I think what you really want to do now, is to configure syslog-ng to your liking. By default, all syslog messages go to /var/log/messages. You can reconfigure it with /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf. But, that file can be pretty daunting.

First, let me explain some concepts in that file. "sources" are places where messages come from. By default, there's just the one source, /dev/log, and that's just fine. Next, "destinations" are places where messages can go. By default, there's just the /var/log/messages source. Next, "logs" will actually connect sources and destinations. Lastly, and not shown in the default Gentoo install, "filters" can be used to pick certain messages from a source.

Whew! Now, onward to what we want to do. If you just want to "mute" all cron messages, you can create a new filter that matches on everything except cron. Add this line, before any "log" lines:

filter f_not_cron { not facility(cron); };

Now, this filter won't do a thing on its own. It must be put to use in a "log" line. So, change your log line with destination(messages) to:

log { source(src); filter(f_not_cron); destination(messages); };

Save the configuration file and, to get the syslog-ng process to reread the configuration, you must send the HUP signal to the process. Do this by running "ps ax | grep syslog-ng". The first column is the PID (process id) of the process shown. So, send the HUP signal by running "kill -HUP <pid>". Don't worry, that won't actually kill the process.

That should do it. Cron messages will no longer be recorded in /var/log/messages. However, cron's messages won't be recorded anywhere! So keep that in mind. A better solution might be to create a new "desination", say /var/log/cron, and a new "filter" that matches just cron, and then a new "log" line to send that filtered batch of messages to that new destination. Let me know if you want help doing all that.

Also, you might notice the other log line sending all messages to the console. This is usually at Alt-F12 from text-mode. Most folks don't even use this except when in a debugging situation, so I usually just leave it alone with all messages going to it.

jokkeri · n00b Joined: 07 Apr 2004 Posts: 1

Tyir · Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2004 11:44 pm Post subject:

Hey, guys finding this post to solve the problem, do NOT COMMENT THE LINE OUT as a solution...it will cause cron to stop working!

DO what the person before me said!

scwalla · n00b Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 20

BigBaaadBob · Posted: Wed May 26, 2004 8:03 pm Post subject:

Seems like it would be a lot easier to have a /etc/conf.d item that would tell vixie-cron not to echo every command it executes. The above does get rid of some of the annoyance, but it doesn't resolve the underlying issue.

sapphirecat · Guru Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 376

FYI: See bug 46628 for some extra commentary/info. In particular:

Stratos · n00b Joined: 23 Jan 2004 Posts: 11 Location: Denmark

Whether 1 or 10 minutes between run-crons, my logs still get clogged by these rather boring messages, so I did as proposed by glh, and made a special destination just for the run-crons output. I still want to catch other cron-output in the regular log, so I made a filter both on the cron facility and a match on "run-crons":

mrnegitoro · Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 4:38 pm Post subject:

Hi,

I'm having similar problems with my cron jobs. This will probably end up being a stupid question but where exactly do I create my log filter? As shown above. I don't see a syslog.conf on my system.

Thanks.

mrnegitoro · Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 5:02 pm Post subject:

Oh, syslog-ng sorry, I'm now emerging it...

mrnegitoro · Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 6:01 pm Post subject:

Argh,

I got the logging down, it occurred to me I am using metalog (duh) but none of my freakin' cron jobs will work. I always get the same error message:

sapphirecat · Guru Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 376

mrnegitoro · Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 7:04 pm Post subject:

Hi,

Yeah I removed the username part "root" from crontab and all seems to be working. I did some searching last night and discovered that was the problem also. Oops some sweet redundant posting on my part but I can finally use cron jobs!

Thanks very much for your reply!

gna · n00b Joined: 19 Mar 2003 Posts: 38 Location: Beijing

I've been getting quite annoyed by my logs being filled up with useless cron messages too. As mentioned above reducing the frequency of the run-crons definitely improves the situation but it isn't a complete solution in my view. I found the syslog-ng filtering suggestions above helpful but wasn't completely happy with the suggestions.

So I have been investigating the syslog-ng filtering and have found a solution I like (in addition to changing the crontab). I wanted to get rid of the hourly, daily messages from cron also. But I still want to see messages from cron about real errors in the messages log. I like to have one main log to look for errors rather than adding another just for cron. After a bit of fiddling I found the messages that I don't want have an "info" level priority. The following filter gets rid of cron messages with "info" or "debug" priority from the logs. Edit /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf with the following:

tholin · Apprentice Joined: 04 Oct 2008 Posts: 203

Adding special logging rules just for cron is treating the symptom instead of the problem. Anyone know if it's possible to prevent vixie-cron from sending all that junk to syslog in the first place?

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

toralf · Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 6:55 pm Post subject:

I've this in /etc/crontab :