A question about crontab and logging in syslog...

trist007 · 02-19-2011, 04:25 PM

I run Slackware 13.0 and have a simple command in my root crontab.

0 3 * * * /usr/bin/updatedb >& /dev/null

I understand updatedb as root will reveal lots but I really only use locate as root anyways.

Ok so in my /etc/syslog.conf I have this entry.
cron.* -/var/log/cron

Yet I don't see any log entries in /var/log/cron. Do running crons from crontab not considered cron.* activities?

What am I missing?

rworkman · 02-19-2011, 08:31 PM

See /etc/rc.d/rc.M:

Code:

# Start crond (Dillon's crond):
# If you want cron to actually log activity to /var/log/cron, then change
# -l notice to -l info to increase the logging level.
if [ -x /usr/sbin/crond ]; then
  /usr/sbin/crond -l notice
fi

Hrm, edit: actually, the text is different in 13.0, but you'll see the appropriate change to make.

trist007 · 02-20-2011, 08:04 AM

Fantastic thanks. I had to change mine to crond -l8 instead of -l10.