Resolved Plesk maintentance/backup tasks not running

[Brian-Dmac]

Hi guys,

I've rolled out several new VMs in the last few months with a new provider and all are experiencing the same issue - Plesk maintenance tasks don't seem to be running. As a result statistics don't calculate on a nightly basis, backups don't run, notifications don't send, etc. All servers are using Centos 7.8 with Plesk Obsidian Version 18.0.32 Update #1

Any ideas why this might be happening?

Thanks in advance
Brian

 

[Bitpalast]

Have you checked that the cron jobs for maintenance exist?

How to check the Plesk Daily Maintenance Task execution time?

Applicable to: Plesk for Linux Plesk for Windows Question How to check the Plesk Daily Maintenance Task execution time? Answer Debian/Ubuntu The behavior is configured by /etc/crontab file: ...

support.plesk.com

 

[Brian-Dmac]

Hi Peter - appreciate the quick reply!

#grep -ri "/etc/cron.daily" /etc/cron.d/dailyjobs
grep: /etc/cron.d/dailyjobs: No such file or directory

#grep -E "START_HOURS_RANGE|cron.daily" /etc/anacrontab
START_HOURS_RANGE=3-22
1 5 cron.daily nice run-parts /etc/cron.daily

Looks to me like the maintenance tasks are being run by anacron?

 

[Brian-Dmac]

In the cron logs I am seeing a lot of:
Jan 29 03:43:01 cloud1 crond[30377]: (root) PAM ERROR (Authentication service cannot retrieve authentication info)
Jan 29 03:43:01 cloud1 crond[30377]: (root) FAILED to authorize user with PAM (Authentication service cannot retrieve authentication info)

Possibly this is the cause?

 

[Brian-Dmac]

I think I solved it!

It looks like the entry for root user was missing from /etc/shadow - fixed by running pwck

I'll check tomorrow to make sure the daily tasks are now running but all other cron tasks have started (it turns out all cron tasks, including subscription level were not working)

Thanks again for sending me down the rabbit hole that led to the answer!