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My backup script works fine when executed manually; but nothing runs from crontab. I am running Fedora 35 Workstation.

The crontab editor works:

$ crontab -e

The cron daemon is not running. Each of these commands has no output:

$ pgrep cron $ pgrep crond $ pidof cron $ pidof crond

My attempts to start cron:

$ whereis cron cron: /usr/share/man/man8/cron.8.gz $ whereis crond crond: /usr/sbin/crond /usr/share/man/man8/crond.8.gz $ sudo service cron start Redirecting to /bin/systemctl start cron.service Failed to start cron.service: Unit cron.service not found. $ sudo systemctl start cron Failed to start cron.service: Unit cron.service not found.

My attempts to use cronie instead of cron:

$ sudo dnf install cronie Package cronie-1.5.7-3.fc35.x86_64 is already installed. Dependencies resolved. Nothing to do. $ sudo systemctl enable cronie.service Failed to enable unit: Unit file cronie.service does not exist. $ sudo systemctl start cronie.service Failed to start cronie.service: Unit cronie.service not found.

Note also that anacron ("cronie.service") remains, if previously installed, during a Fedora system upgrade, but is NOT installed on, at least, Fedora Server 35, very surprisingly, when doing a fresh installation.

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  • 1
    On my F35 XFCE VM, the crond service is installed and enabled by default; process is /usr/sbin/crond -n. Commented Dec 30, 2021 at 2:20
  • @ajgringo619 That worked! How did you find the location of crond? Commented Dec 30, 2021 at 3:13
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    For future reference, the service is named crond.service. Docs: docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f35/… Commented Dec 30, 2021 at 3:28

4 Answers 4

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If this command is used:

# systemctl start crond.service

then the system will keep it up for you, even through reboots. Thus, you don't have to remember to do it!

Further, to get status, use:

# systemctl status crond.service

Finally, # of course means from the root account, so use sudo (or not) as appropriate.

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Cron executed my backup script after using the crond location posted by ajgringo619:

$ ls -l /usr/sbin/crond -rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 74448 Jul 21 15:05 /usr/sbin/crond $ sudo /usr/sbin/crond start $ pgrep cron 121692
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Your script is probably using/calling resources with relative path and or shell environment context.

Cron runs its scripts without shell and without environment context.

Try running your script with user nobody :

 sudo -u nobody <your-scirpt-full-path>

Once your script is running with user nobody it may run in cron.

A common trick to inject current bash shell environment context to a script:

 sed -i "2i source $HOME/.bash_script" <your-scirpt-full-path>
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On Ubuntu please use the following command

sudo service cron start
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