cron error: bad username

Solution 1:

* * * * * digger /home/digger/webxass

is the correct syntax.

Solution 2:

As it's been answered, the user should be specified. This puzzled me because I'd seen it work without the user on another machine. Just want to add that it is required because it is a system job. From the manual:

Jobs in /etc/cron.d/

The jobs in cron.d and /etc/crontab are system jobs, which are used usually for more than one user, thus, additionally the username is needed. MAILTO on the first line is optional. EXAMPLE OF A JOB IN /etc/cron.d/job

   #login as root
   #create job with preferred editor (e.g. vim)
   MAILTO=root
   * * * * * root touch /tmp/file

Source: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/crontab.5.html

Now, why is it that I had seen /etc/crontab entries without the user apparently working on another machine? Turns out that there was a symlink pointing to it in: /var/spool/cron/crontabs (root -> /etc/crontab). Ha! Not what I'd recommend, by the way.

Solution 3:

Your shell script will only run once per hour, to execute it every minute the contents of cat /etc/cron.d/doge should be as follows:

* * * * * /home/digger/webxass

instead of

1 * * * * /home/digger/webxass

For all errors related to cron jobs, see /var/log/syslog.