How to get log of running cron job

Question

How can I tail the running cron job, so that I can come to the conclusion that my job is going on.

Answer 1

In your script you could echo something like echo 'My job started on: ' $(date) and in your cron, redirect both the stdout and the stderr to a file:

* * * * * /path/to/your/job &>/tmp/MyJobLog

If you want to check 'live' what your job is doing, just do tail -f /tmp/MyJobLog

Another option is to log the start (or the end) of your script in syslog with the logger command if supported by your distro.

Answer 2

You need to find out the PID of your job:

ps ax | grep jobname

After that you can check if your job is working, by tracing its actions with strace.