cron won't execute tasks

[Robert Pollard <rpollard at apple dot com>]

Hello all,

This problem is driving me insane (I don't have far to go ;-).

Configuration:
Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition, quad processor, 12 GB RAM.  Just 
downloaded Cygwin a few days ago.  So, it should be the latest.

The possible root cause:
BTW, I am trying to run cron as a service.
Our IT person installed Cygwin under a domain account.  Cron would run 
every minute but wouldn't switch user context.  So, I had him 
re-install Cygwin under a new local account that was assigned to the 
Windows Administrators group.

The problem:
Cron will not execute every minute now.  I have a scheduled task that 
does something like "* * * * * /bin/echo "Test" >/dev/null 
1>/TestAct.log"  It doesn't execute at all.

The other problem:
Cron will not execute scheduled tasks even if I run it from the command 
line as in: /usr/sbin/cron

If cron is run from the command line and I set up a simple cron job 
from the command line (crontab <file name>) it should execute every 
minute.

I apologize up front for any missing information but what I really need 
is a check list of things I need to look at in order to make cron run 
every minute as it should.

Usually, it reports to the system log and I can tell that it is at 
least trying to run every minute.  It's very difficult to know what is 
happening since it doesn't report anything to the system log.  If I run 
it from the command line I can't even see any logging activities at 
all.  Looking into /var/log/cron.log only shows when it is started and 
stopped.

BTW, the only way I can get an entry into the system log is to run 
crontab.  It tries to reload the crontab entry.  When it was under the 
domain user, I was able to see an entry in the system log every minute. 
 Although, it wouldn't execute the scripts because it couldn't switch 
user context.

Thanks for any help you can give.

-Robert Pollard


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