Dietpi-service cron is failing on reboot

Hi there,

The cron service doesnt start when my Pi ist being rebooted.

Manually starting the service via

 
service cron start

works though.

What could be the reason?

Output after reboot:

service cron status
● cron.service - Regular background program processing daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/cron.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
  Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/cron.service.d
           └─dietpi-services_edit.conf
   Active: failed (Result: signal) since Mon 2020-05-18 16:45
:07 CEST; 42s ago
     Docs: man:cron(8)
  Process: 1102 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/cron -f $EXTRA_OPTS (code=ki
lled, signal=KILL)
 Main PID: 1102 (code=killed, signal=KILL)
    Tasks: 1 (limit: 4915)
   CGroup: /system.slice/cron.service
           └─1304 rsync

May 18 16:45:07 DietPi CRON[1110]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
May 18 16:45:07 DietPi CRON[1128]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/logrotate /etc/pihole/logrotate)
May 18 16:45:07 DietPi CRON[1129]: (root) CMD (/root/.configrc/a/upd>/dev/null 2>&1)
May 18 16:45:07 DietPi CRON[1130]: (root) CMD (/root/.configrc/b/sync>/dev/null 2>&1  )
May 18 16:45:07 DietPi CRON[1108]: (CRON) info (No MTA installed, discarding output)
May 18 16:45:07 DietPi CRON[1108]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
May 18 16:45:07 DietPi CRON[1110]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
May 18 16:45:07 DietPi systemd[1]: cron.service: Main process exited, code=killed,
 status=9/KILL
May 18 16:45:07 DietPi systemd[1]: cron.service: Unit entered failed state.
May 18 16:45:07 DietPi systemd[1]: cron.service: Failed with result 'signal'.

Many thanks in advance,
T

Hi,

many thanks for your report. It seem cron is getting killed by the system. Can you have a look to journalctl and kernel messages if you see some errors related to killing cron?

journalctl -u cron.service
dmesg -l err,crit,alert,emerg

Directly after reboot:

 journalctl -u cron.service
-- Logs begin at Thu 2016-11-03 18:16:42 CET, end at Tue 2020-05-19 17:57:14 CEST. --
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi systemd[1]: Started Regular background program processing daemon.
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi cron[1114]: (CRON) INFO (pidfile fd = 3)
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi cron[1114]: (CRON) INFO (Running @reboot jobs)
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi CRON[1121]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi CRON[1120]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi CRON[1119]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi CRON[1136]: (root) CMD (/root/.configrc/b/sync>/dev/null 2>&1  )
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi CRON[1137]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/logrotate /etc/pihole/logrotate)
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi CRON[1122]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi CRON[1141]: (root) CMD (   PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/bin/" pihole updatechecker remote reboot)
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi CRON[1120]: (CRON) info (No MTA installed, discarding output)
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi CRON[1145]: (root) CMD (/root/.configrc/a/upd>/dev/null 2>&1)
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi CRON[1120]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi CRON[1122]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi systemd[1]: cron.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=9/KILL
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi systemd[1]: cron.service: Unit entered failed state.
May 19 17:52:12 DietPi systemd[1]: cron.service: Failed with result 'signal'.

hard to say what is killing cron as there are no other error message

What else can I do? What options are there to solve or work around the issue?

currently I don’t have an idea as there is no error message and we don’t know what is killing the process

The same problem, I just pulled the system again, it worked in the previous system.

root@DietPi:~# journalctl -u cron.service
-- Logs begin at Thu 2019-02-14 11:11:58 CET, end at Sat 2020-08-29 11:42:01 CEST. --
Aug 29 11:40:41 DietPi systemd[1]: Started Regular background program processing daemon.
Aug 29 11:40:41 DietPi cron[824]: (CRON) INFO (pidfile fd = 3)
Aug 29 11:40:41 DietPi cron[824]: (CRON) INFO (Running @reboot jobs)
Aug 29 11:41:01 DietPi CRON[1118]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Aug 29 11:41:01 DietPi CRON[1119]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Aug 29 11:41:01 DietPi CRON[1126]: (root) CMD (cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.minutely)
Aug 29 11:41:01 DietPi CRON[1127]: (root) CMD (/cmd/kikapcs.sh)
Aug 29 11:41:01 DietPi CRON[1118]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Aug 29 11:41:01 DietPi CRON[1119]: (CRON) info (No MTA installed, discarding output)
Aug 29 11:41:01 DietPi CRON[1119]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Aug 29 11:42:01 DietPi CRON[1258]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Aug 29 11:42:01 DietPi CRON[1259]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Aug 29 11:42:01 DietPi CRON[1266]: (root) CMD (/cmd/kikapcs.sh)
Aug 29 11:42:01 DietPi CRON[1267]: (root) CMD (cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.minutely)
Aug 29 11:42:01 DietPi CRON[1259]: (CRON) info (No MTA installed, discarding output)
Aug 29 11:42:01 DietPi CRON[1258]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Aug 29 11:42:01 DietPi CRON[1259]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root

Hi,

I don’t see any error message on your output. I see cron is being executed every minute and seems to be running.

Aug 29 11:41:01 DietPi CRON[1126]: (root) CMD (cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.minutely)
Aug 29 11:42:01 DietPi CRON[1267]: (root) CMD (cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.minutely)

pls check status of the service

systemctl status cron.service