Magento2 how to check if cronjobs are correctly set?

Question

I'm pretty sure my cronjobs doesn't work properly. All catalog rules that I created are resetting every day. I checked the cron_schedule table in my db and its empty. Is there a way to test or check if the jobs are well executed?

According to the Magento 2 documentation, I have created a crontab like the following:

* * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/prod/bin/magento cron:run | grep -v "Ran jobs by schedule" >> /var/www/prod/var/log/magento.cron.log
* * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/prod/update/cron.php >> /var/www/prod/var/log/update.cron.log
* * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/prod/bin/magento setup:cron:run >> /var/www/prod/var/log/setup.cron.log

When I search for "How to create a cronjob for M2", I find a lot of answers. For example, some adds the php.ini path or */1 for schedule.

*/1 * * * * /usr/bin/php -c /etc/php/7.0/cli/php.ini /var/www/prod/bin/magento cron:run | grep -v "Ran jobs by schedule" >> /var/www/prod/var/log/magento.cron.log
*/1 * * * * /usr/bin/php -c /etc/php/7.0/cli/php.ini /var/www/prod/update/cron.php >> /var/www/prod/var/log/update.cron.log
*/1 * * * * /usr/bin/php -c /etc/php/7.0/cli/php.ini /var/www/prod/bin/magento setup:cron:run >> /var/www/prod/var/log/setup.cron.log

Which one should I use?

Answer 1

I am going to explain three different ways to test if your cronjobs are working properly.

First of all

Magento creates three log files, which are var/log/magento.cron.log, var/log/update.cron.log and var/log/setup.cron.log. You can watch these log files.

Secondly

You should see some input with the following SQL query: select * from cron_schedule. It keeps track of each cron job, when it is run, when it is finished if it is finished.

Finally

You can run the following commands on your command line, and see if they are running properly without any error.

/usr/bin/php /var/www/prod/bin/magento cron:run | grep -v "Ran jobs by schedule"
/usr/bin/php /var/www/prod/update/cron.php
/usr/bin/php /var/www/prod/bin/magento setup:cron:run

About the cronjob entries

To your second question (Which one should I use?), the first and the second approach almost the same. The only difference is that you are explicitly defining the php.ini in the second one. In my opinion, the php.ini file for cronjobs and for the web should be the same. (Note that */1 and * is the same thing.)

To avoid issues during installation and upgrade, we strongly recommend you apply the same PHP settings to both the PHP command-line configuration and to the PHP web server plug-in’s configuration. For more information, see Required PHP settings. http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/config-guide/cli/config-cli-subcommands-cron.html