How to check cron logs in Ubuntu

Solution 1:

If you want to know if it's running you can do something like sudo systemctl status cron or ps aux | grep cron.

If you want to know if your cron jobs are running, check /var/log/syslog with the process name cron. For example:

Apr 26 21:17:01 example CRON[18055]: (root) CMD (   cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)

Solution 2:

1. modify rsyslog config: open /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf,remove # before cron.*
2. restart rsyslog service: sudo service rsyslog restart
3. restart cron service: service cron restart

now you can check cron log from file /var/log/cron.log

Solution 3:

By default the cron log in Ubuntu is located at /var/log/syslog. Use the below command to check the cron entries in this file.

grep cron /var/log/syslog

Solution 4:

New information for 2020: cron is now a systemctl service, so you can have the logs of cron / anacron with:

journalctl -u cron.service

if you did install anacron, it is the same with:

journalctl -u anacron.service

(anacron is for desktop, when your computer is not garanteed to be always on. It enforce that even if your computer is down at 5'00, daily jobs are run when the computer has started up).