How to verify if a cronjob was run

Introduction

This article covers checking the cron log to verify if a specific cronjob was executed.

Procedure

Crond logs to different files depending on your operating system. You can search the appropriate system log files for entries related to crond.

On CentOS, AlmaLinux, RockyLinux, and CloudLinux servers, cron tasks are logged in the cron log:

[root@server ~] grep cptest /var/log/cron
...
Aug 8 03:45:15 cent7 CROND[22729]: (cptest) CMD (/usr/local/bin/php /home/cptest/public_html/cron.php)

On Ubuntu servers, crond logs to the general syslog:

[root@server ~] grep CRON /var/log/syslog | grep cptest
...
Aug 8 03:45:15 ubuntu CRON[6405]: (root) CMD (/usr/local/bin/php /home/cptest/public_html/cron.php)

The results above show that "/usr/local/bin/php /home/cptest/public_html/cron.php" was executed at 03:45 AM on August 8th.