# Cron job not executing



## rodyaj (Jan 11, 2013)

Hi. I'm new to FreeBSD and enjoying setting it up. Now this is probably a silly mistake by myself, but I can't figure out how to run my cron job.

As user I run '*crontab -e*'. This is my crontab entirely:


```
@reboot /usr/local/bin/tmux new-session -d '/usr/local/bin/rtorrent'
```

I expected this command to run every boot as it executed fine from a shell and I used absolute paths.

But there is no tmux session running when I reboot. I tested a few different things out such as adding shebang and PATH variable:


```
#!/bin/sh
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin
@reboot /usr/local/bin/tmux new-session -d '/usr/local/bin/rtorrent'
```

I also tried making a /var/cron/allow with my username in it.

Here is my cron log:


```
tail < /var/log/cron

Jan 11 10:35:51 salientdream crontab[4714]: (joe) BEGIN EDIT (joe)
Jan 11 10:35:54 salientdream crontab[4714]: (joe) END EDIT (joe)
Jan 11 10:36:00 salientdream /usr/sbin/cron[2528]: (joe) RELOAD (tabs/joe)
Jan 11 10:38:56 salientdream crontab[3418]: (joe) BEGIN EDIT (joe)
Jan 11 10:40:00 salientdream /usr/sbin/cron[3821]: (root) CMD (/usr/libexec/atrun)
Jan 11 10:40:04 salientdream crontab[3418]: (joe) REPLACE (joe)
Jan 11 10:40:05 salientdream crontab[3418]: (joe) END EDIT (joe)
Jan 11 10:41:00 salientdream /usr/sbin/cron[2523]: (joe) RELOAD (tabs/joe)
Jan 11 10:44:00 salientdream /usr/sbin/cron[5283]: (operator) CMD (/usr/libexec/save-entropy)
Jan 11 10:45:00 salientdream /usr/sbin/cron[5654]: (root) CMD (/usr/libexec/atrun)
```

The only other thing I can think of is that I have this setup to autologin my user. Could this be preventing the cronjob from executing? Thanks for reading.


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## SirDice (Jan 11, 2013)

Keep tailing:
`tail -f /var/log/cron`

And schedule it for every hour or so, so you don't have to reboot each time. See if removing that autologon helps.


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## rodyaj (Jan 11, 2013)

Solved. I had to go to the end of the last line in my crontab and press enter to create a linefeed. Please mark this as solved for me as it seems I can't until I have enough posts. Thanks.


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## xtaz (Jan 11, 2013)

FYI I usually test @reboot crons by just running:

`# service cron restart`

This has the same effect.


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## rodyaj (Jan 11, 2013)

xtaz said:
			
		

> FYI I usually test @reboot crons by just running:
> 
> `# service cron restart`
> 
> This has the same effect.



Thanks. That's useful to know, as I wasn't sure whether a service restart would work the same as at boot time. 

Also, just adding absolute paths to executables in the cron job isn't enough. I had to add a path line like this: 


```
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin
@reboot /usr/local/bin/tmux new-session -d 'rtorrent'
```


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