Cron not working in 20.10?

[Francis Grizzly Smit]

On 03/12/2020 11:48, david wrote:
> Folks
>
> I have a suspicion that cron isn't working in Ubuntu 20.10 server.  I 
> have an entry in a user's crontab:  (real addresses hidden)
it's working on 20.10 desktop
$ crontab -l
# Edit this file to introduce tasks to be run by cron.
#
# Each task to run has to be defined through a single line
# indicating with different fields when the task will be run
# and what command to run for the task
#
# To define the time you can provide concrete values for
# minute (m), hour (h), day of month (dom), month (mon),
# and day of week (dow) or use '*' in these fields (for 'any').
#
# Notice that tasks will be started based on the cron's system
# daemon's notion of time and timezones.
#
# Output of the crontab jobs (including errors) is sent through
# email to the user the crontab file belongs to (unless redirected).
#
# For example, you can run a backup of all your user accounts
# at 5 a.m every week with:
# 0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/
#
# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)
#
# m h  dom mon dow   command
2  22   *   *   *    echo Fred >> ~/tmp/fred.tmp
22:02:16 θ67° grizzlysmit at pern:~ $ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:    Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 20.10
Release:    20.10
Codename:    groovy


and in another term
$ tail -F tmp/fred.tmp
tail: cannot open 'tmp/fred.tmp' for reading: No such file or directory
tail: 'tmp/fred.tmp' has appeared;  following new file
Fred


>
>
>
>  crontab -l
> MAILTO=alert at example.com
> MAILFROM=exxx at eexample.com
> DOCUMENT_ROOT=/home1/exxx/public_html
> NOPRINT=1
> @reboot perl public_html/0/cgi/80_reboot_scan.crn
> 38 * * * * perl public_html/0/cgi/90_hourly.crn
> 52 * * * * perl public_html/0/cgi/90_resync.crn
> */5 * * * * perl public_html/0/cgi/99_renew.crn
> exxx at elk:~$
>
>
> None of the entries appear to execute; many produce e-mails to me 
> which are not arriving.
>
> Similar crontab entries work fine on Centos 7, Centos 8.  The output 
> of "systemctl status cron" shows it active, enabled, and no diagnostics.
>
> Where should I look?
>
> David
>
>
-- 

    .~.     In my life God comes first....
    /V\         but Linux is pretty high after that :-D
   /( )\    Francis (Grizzly) Smit
   ^^-^^    http://www.smit.id.au/