Cron settings greyed out

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Nextcloud version _13.0.6
Operating system and version (eg, Ubuntu 17.04):
Apache or nginx version (eg, Apache 2.4.25):
PHP version (eg, 7.1):

The issue you are facing:
Cron job is greyed out


Is this the first time you’ve seen this error? (Y/N):

Steps to replicate it:

The output of your Nextcloud log in Admin > Logging:

PASTE HERE

The output of your config.php file in /path/to/nextcloud (make sure you remove any identifiable information!):

PASTE HERE

The output of your Apache/nginx/system log in /var/log/____:

PASTE HERE

I have the same behavior with 19.04.
What is the reason that the cron option is grayed out?
I have configured the cron job on my server and I am sure that it was running well in the past but now I got the error that the cron job fails and now the cron option is grayed out.

Perhaps run the cronjob from command line to catch the error:

sudo -u www-data php -f cron.php

The command is not the problem: I configured the cron job to cron (NOT AJAX, not Webcron) and it runs fine for weeks.
But now I get the cron job error, what is not a surprise, because the config changed to webcron (which I have never configured, so it must fail) and my favorite option “cron” is grayed out.

So no change to get back to running cron job,

Ist php-cli installiert?

Kann ich adhoc nicht beantworten. Wohin zielt die Frage? Interessant wäre es zu erfahren, was Nextcloud bewegt die “Cron” Option zu deaktivieren . Die Doku sagt nichts dazu. Da steht man dann hilflos davor.

So there is no error running it from terminal? Question is, perhaps it is not running properly so for Nextcloud interface it looks like it wasn’t run for a long time. You can also check your logs, there should be something at the time the cronjob is supposed to run.

There is no error running it from terminal
It would be interesting to know why Nextcloud disables the “Cron” option. The documentation says nothing about this.

After manual start of the cron job via terminal, Nextcloud is happy with it. And “Cron” is chosen again in the settings.
But the “Cron” option is still greyed out.
I bet in a few days or weeks I get the error again and the options falls back to “Webcron” which is not configured.

image

The error is triggered again.
“Cron” option is still greyed out.

Error:
Background Tasks
Last task execution ran yesterday. Something seems to be wrong.

Command line executes without problem
No relevant error log entry

That is too long. Perhaps it runs under a wrong user? Do you see something in your Nextcloud log when the cronjob is supposed to run? Normally it leaves a trace, if there is nothing that would be strange.

thanx for the answer: I have checked the log,but it is empty.

A basic question to avoid errors:
You configured crontab for the user running your web server e. g. www-data on ubuntu?

It is a Debian Linux server.
I have not the privileged to use crontab on ssh on the server, but I used the LiveConfig GUI to configure the cron job.

The cmd php -f /var/www/example/htdocs/nextcloud/cron.php runs fine on ssh, but not with the configured cron job via GUI.

I am still confused why “Cron” is disabled (greyed out) on the nextcloud GUI. Does it means this option is not available?

What is that?

It is the control panel software of my provider

You don’t get any log or something of it? Does it run with the user’s permissions?

The error logs nor the nextcloud log contains any cron job relevant messages.
(the nextcloud log is spammed with “shell_exec() has been disabled for security reasons at /var/www/www3018/htdocs/nextcloud/apps/serverinfo/lib/OperatingSystems/DefaultOs.php”

But that is a know behavior, because the next cloud system info uses shell_exec which is not allowed on my sertver. See https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/18659

Yes, I think the cron cob runs with the same user permissions.

Hmmm,

my provider wrote me that the cron job is doing fine. So why the error message from nextcloud?

Nov 2 13:10:01 www3 CRON[3433]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user www3018 by (uid=0)

Nov 2 13:10:01 www3 CRON[3433]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user www3018

Nov 2 13:15:01 www3 CRON[24792]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user www3018 by (uid=0)

Nov 2 13:15:01 www3 CRON[24792]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user www3018