Cron not working correctly.

I have a freebsd (5.3) installation on my server, and lately cron hasn't been working it seems like. I have entries in cron to update my web statistics each night (one site is done at 2:00am, the other at 2:02 am) but lately cron seems to be skipping these (and maybe all) job. If I restart the cron service by doing /etc/rc.d/cron stop; /etc/rc.d/cron start the problem seems to be corrected for a couple days, then it stops processing jobs again.

I messed with the date/time once a few months back, and am wondering if this has anything to do with it? I also have ntpd run on the first and the 15th to sync the server time, and am wondering if that might have something to do with it stopping the processing of jobs.

Perhaps it'd be better to have ntpd running all the time to ensure the clock is up to date (if you have a 24/7 connection that is)? Have a look in /etc/defaults/rc.conf for the options you have with ntpd, there's a vcouple of different types of ntpd iirc.

As for the cron problem have you checked the cron logs in /var/log/cron to see what's going on?

Another useful tip is to use the -x debug option to cron - for example to do a dry run of cron without executing anything do 'cron -x test' (cron can't be running already though so stop it first!). There are various other -x debug options though so read through the cron manpage for some more ideas.

The power went out last week so my server got shutdown and restarted. So far cron seems to be running ok again, but I'll keep this information in mind incase it starts to act up again. Thanks.

Keep an eye on this, if further problems arise - we're willing to help as far as we can

M.