Cron daemon running status check

Question

I have a script which need to be run as cron job.

In the staging environment i could run the script as a cronjob. but in the production environment it is not working,

so i checked whether cron daemon is running on the production

ps -ax|grep cron

but this command gives me following error message.

Warning: bad syntax, perhaps a bogus '-'? See /usr/share/doc/procps-3.2.7/FAQ
 4120 ?        Ss     0:06 crond
13640 pts/6    S+     0:00 grep cron

could anybody explain me what is wrong with this command

Answer 1

ps ax|grep cron The error you get is because of the - in the ps command is not needed

It depends a bit on which version of ps you are using, on RHEL man ps says:

   This version of ps accepts several kinds of options:
   1   UNIX options, which may be grouped and must be preceded by a dash.
   2   BSD options, which may be grouped and must not be used with a dash.
   3   GNU long options, which are preceded by two dashes.

...

EXAMPLES
   To see every process on the system using standard syntax:
      ps -e
      ps -ef
      ps -eF
      ps -ely

   To see every process on the system using BSD syntax:
      ps ax
      ps axu

Answer 2

Try the command ps -ef | grep cron