How to debug or test cron script

If your simple cron script (/etc/cron.daily, etc/cron.hourly etc) does not run as expected, do the following:

1. be sure to have ‘#!/bin/sh’ as the first line

2. make sure the script’s name does not contains ‘.’. for example, you should rename ‘yourscript.sh’ to ‘yourscript’.

3. use absolute path if you need to read/write files in the script

4. try run the script in the shell to make sure there is no obvious problem

5. ‘run-parts –test /etc/cron.hourly/’ will tell you what scripts will run, you should see your script in the list

6. next try to run it like cron does, for example:

cd / && run-parts –report /etc/cron.hourly

7. cron uses syslog for logging. Check your syslog config file ( /etc/syslog.conf) to see where the log is, and check the log for errors.

viaX.Y.Z: How to debug or test cron script.