Cron says it runs commands but doesn't

Asked Jun 19 '19 at 07:52

Active Jun 20 '19 at 18:53

Viewed 53 times

I have a very weird problem. I have a crontab which looks like this (this is the output of crontab -l:

* * * * * touch /home/<user>/Desktop/crontest.txt

A sample output of sudo grep CRON /var/log/syslog gives:

Jun 19 09:49:01 set-l-me-l16039 CRON[8399]: (u0128861) CMD (touch /home/<user>/Desktop/crontest.txt)

Yet no file is created in my Desktop! Running the command in the terminal produces the text file crontab.txt but the cron job doesn't. I'm running Ubuntu 18.04.

EDIT: I use crontab -e to edit my crontab. Also I should mention that the same happens on my other machine running Ubuntu 18.04.

edited Jun 20 '19 at 18:53

asked Jun 19 '19 at 07:52

Gobs

2

Do you have permissions for ur user in that directory? – arjnt Jun 19 '19 at 07:55
2

In the real world, is replaced with a real username, right ? – Soren A Jun 19 '19 at 08:13
@Melebius I checked that thread and checked the first 4 answers and they didn't help. – Gobs Jun 19 '19 at 12:01
@arjithn I do, and also is replaced with a real username – Gobs Jun 19 '19 at 12:02
1

Please [edit] your question to add the command you used to edit the crontab and the output of ls -ld /home/<user>/Desktop. You can also try to log the output by adding > /home/<user>/crontest.log 2>&1 at the end of your command. If the file gets created, post its contents. See also Debugging crontab jobs. – Melebius Jun 19 '19 at 12:06
as always: USE ABSOLUTE PATHS. /usr/bin/touch – Rinzwind Jun 20 '19 at 20:15

Cron says it runs commands but doesn't

0 Answers0