On Catalina, how can a cronjob get permission to touch files on a USB disk?

I have a USB disk, that takes ages to spin up after it has gone to sleep. So in the past I used either a cron job to regularly touch a file on it, so it will never spin down.

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/touch /Volumes/xxx/touch.txt >/tmp/stdout.log 2>/tmp/stderr.log

Only since Catalina, these jobs get a touch: /Volumes/xxx/touch.txt: Operation not permitted. When I use the same command in the console, it works nicely.

I had to grant the terminal access full disk access. Is there a similar restriction on this cron task?

Solution 1:

You need to grant cron full disk access. Drag /usr/sbin/cron into the Full Disk Access area in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy tab.

Source: https://twitter.com/DaveWoodX/status/1184235412509941761