[Koha] cron issue with Koha on Ubuntu

[Steve Nickerson]

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.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Alexander [mailto:marka at pobox.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2017 9:57 AM
To: koha <koha at lists.katipo.co.nz>
Cc: Steve Nickerson <stevenanickerson at gmail.com>
Subject: RE: [Koha] cron issue with Koha on Ubuntu

I wrote:

> I'm not sure I understand why anacron was required.

Looking at this some more, could it be that your server isn't running continuously?

The reason I ask is that the file /etc/crontab on Debian 8 looks like this:

17 *	* * *	root    cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
25 6	* * *	root	test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily )
47 6	* * 7	root	test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly )
52 6	1 * *	root	test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly )

I believe this means that if your machine isn't running at these times, and anacron isn't available, the cron jobs won't run.  In particular, it appears that the daily, weekly, and monthly jobs are run between 6:25 and 6:52 AM.

Anacron is useful for personal machines that don't run continuously, but it doesn't play well with Koha, in my experience.