Excerpts from Steve Nickerson's message of 2017-02-21 12:04:10 -0500:
The server on all the time, but the problem was that /usr/sbin/anacron didn't exist so the jobs were never kicking off because of the "test -x /usr/sbin/anacron" was of course not finding anacron.
That is surprising. If anacron isn't present, the normal cron takes over via run-parts, as for example:
25 6 * * * root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily )
In other words, it should be possible to run your cron jobs without anacron. There must be something else missing. Maybe the cron daemon hasn't been started; you can see if it is running using: ps auxfw | egrep cron Or maybe it hasn't been installed; this can be checked using: dpkg -S /usr/sbin/cron or aptitude search "~i cron"