How to see full cron log (Not of just 1 day or less)?

Question

I want see all the jobs that has been scheduled by using cron for the last 1 week (or certain specified time). I used the command

sudo grep CRON /var/log/syslog

But it only shows the log for 1 day. Is there any command in Ubuntu to track them?

Redbob · Accepted Answer

You can do this to newer syslog files:

cd /var/log
cat syslog.1 syslog | grep CRON

To the oldest you must do it:

cd /var/log
zcat syslog syslog.4.gz syslog.3.gz syslog.2.gz | grep CRON

It's a good idea to do these commands nested in loops, specially to zcat, since syslog.#.gz are more numerous.

You can even store them into another file to analyze better:

cd /var/log
zcat syslog syslog.4.gz syslog.3.gz syslog.2.gz | grep CRON > ~/cronanalysis.txt
cat syslog.1 syslog | grep CRON >> ~/cronanalysis.txt

The order of syslog files is inverted, so you put older to head and newer events to tail.

Ravi Sethia · Answer

On Amazon Linux you can find it in
/var/log/cron file
tail /var/log/cron

Wirewrap · Answer

Another alternative is

sudo zgrep CRON /var/log/syslog*

zgrep uncompresses files if needed. Options same as for grep.

3 Answers