26

Have you ever seen wrong order in /var/log/syslog ? I think that it causes only crontab.

Jun 28 22:20:01 alex CRON[2327]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 28 22:21:01 alex CRON[2700]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 21 03:49:01 alex CRON[2753]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 28 22:23:01 alex CRON[2754]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 27 05:08:01 alex CRON[2813]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 26 00:19:01 alex CRON[2816]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 28 22:25:01 alex CRON[2816]: (munin) CMD (if [ -x /usr/bin/munin-cron ]; then /usr/bin/munin-cron; fi)
Jun 28 22:25:01 alex CRON[2821]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 28 22:27:01 alex CRON[3225]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 28 22:28:01 alex CRON[3240]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 28 22:30:01 alex CRON[3290]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 26 12:03:01 alex CRON[3291]: message repeated 2 times: [ (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)]
Jun 28 22:30:01 alex CRON[3291]: (munin) CMD (if [ -x /usr/bin/munin-cron ]; then /usr/bin/munin-cron; fi)
Jun 28 22:31:01 alex CRON[3659]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 28 22:32:01 alex CRON[3754]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 16 06:41:01 alex CRON[3846]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 28 22:35:58 alex cron[909]: (CRON) INFO (pidfile fd = 3)
Jun 28 22:35:58 alex cron[944]: (CRON) STARTUP (fork ok)
Jun 28 22:35:58 alex cron[944]: (CRON) INFO (Running @reboot jobs)
Jun 28 22:36:01 alex CRON[1428]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 28 22:37:01 alex CRON[3050]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 28 22:38:01 alex CRON[3082]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)
Jun 28 22:39:01 alex CRON[3114]: (root) CMD (something > /dev/null)

As you can see, there is bad time order between lines. It is just crontab error, or there is some problem with system clock, or something?

I am running the latest Ubuntu 14.04 kernel:

Linux alex 3.13.0-30-generic #54-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jun 9 22:45:01 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Tomasz
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2 Answers2

28

This is a tricksy one, and it's actually a bug in rsyslog, specifically RepeatedMsgReduction On, and a change in behaviour with the version released with Trusty (compared to earlier versions)

See http://bugzilla.adiscon.com/show_bug.cgi?id=527 for the gory details.

In short, turn off RepeatedMsgReduction on Trusty (i.e. sudo sed -i -r 's/^\$RepeatedMsgReduction.*/$RepeatedMsgReduction off/' /etc/rsyslog.conf). It's not helpful, and does dumb things.

Roger Dueck
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Craig Miskell
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  • 18
0

Did your machine perhaps restart right around then? Based on your log it seems that cron got restarted at least. It's possible you have a bad CMOS battery, and your machine isn't keeping accurate time when powered off.

Is this a virtual machine? Perhaps it was migrated to a different host, and the clock became incorrect during the migration?

Does your 'something' script perhaps set the time by accident?

Really, this could be any number of things. This is not normal behavior though.

devicenull
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