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Asked: 2026-05-24T21:20:07+00:00

I will preface this by saying I am very new to command line programming

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I will preface this by saying I am very new to command line programming with Debian Ubuntu…

I have been trying to set up a crontab list on a Debian Ubuntu server but have not been able to get it to work. Here is a sample:

MAILTO=myemail@gmail.com
* * * * * wall test
* * * * * /usr/bin/python2.6 /home/user/test.py > /home/user/clean_tmp_dir.log

The above shows up when I type “crontab -l” but no resulting output appears in the console. The “test.py” is supposed to generate a csv file but none is being created.

I am not receiving any output/error emails. I tried to find a log, but “var/log/cron” does not exist, nor does “etc/syslog.conf”…I tried to edit “etc/rsyslog.conf”, but got “E212: Can’t open file for writing”…I am logged in, however. Do I need some sort of special administrative privileges? Do I need to specify user or “root” or something?

Does anyone know what I’m doing wrong, how I can create/view a log, or how I can perform any other straightforward tests? Thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Ok, let’s start over again.

    Create a file, say cron.txt, with exactly the following contents (1 line):

    * * * * * touch $HOME/CRON_IS_RUNNING

    (Do not create CRON_IS_RUNNING manually.) Run

    crontab cron.txt

    which should quietly produce no output, then

    crontab -l

    which should print

    * * * * * touch $HOME/CRON_IS_RUNNING

    Wait a minute or so, perhaps 2 minutes, then

    ls -l $HOME/CRON_IS_RUNNING

    which should print something like

    -rw-r--r-- 1 yourname yourgroup 0 2011-08-23 20:11 CRON_IS_RUNNING

    If this all works, it will confirm that you can run cron jobs.

    If that’s successful, the problem may be with your test.py command. Does it work when you run it from the command line? If it works from the command line but not from cron, test.py might have some dependency on environment variables (cron jobs run with fewer environment variables set than interactive commands typically do).

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