To create a “cron.log” file to log crontab logs on Ubuntu 16.04, 18.04, and 20.04, you can use the following steps:
- Create the “cron.log” file:
touch /var/log/cron.log
- Change the ownership of the file to the syslog user:
chown syslog:adm /var/log/cron.log
- Edit the syslog configuration file:
nano /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf
- Add the following line to the end of the file:
cron.* /var/log/cron.log
- Restart the syslog service to apply the changes:
# service rsyslog restart
That’s it! The “cron.log” file will now log all crontab logs. You can view the logs using the following command:
tail -f /var/log/cron.log
Note that these steps assume that you are using the default syslog implementation on Ubuntu. If you are using a different logging system, the steps to configure crontab logging may differ.