What timezone is your server configured in?
Knowing your server's timezone matters when you're configuring cron job monitoring, because the schedule you give us needs to match the clock your cron actually runs on.
Here's how to check.
On a Linux server
You need ssh access. Once you're logged in, run date:
$ date Tue Jul 14 08:34:35 UTC 2020
The second-to-last value is the timezone, in this case UTC.
To print only the timezone and offset:
$ date +"%Z %z"
CEST +0200
On most Linux distributions, you can also check /etc/timezone:
$ cat /etc/timezone
Etc/UTC
Or follow the /etc/localtime symlink, which usually points to the zoneinfo file that matches your current timezone:
$ ls -alh /etc/localtime /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Brussels
The destination path (the value after the arrow) gives you the human-readable timezone, in this case Europe/Brussels.
On a Windows server
You'll find the timezone in Date & time settings.
- Open Start
- Go to Settings
- Click Time & language
- Click Date & time
The configured timezone is listed right at the top.
Once you know your server's timezone, configure your cron job monitoring schedule to match. Mismatched timezones are the most common reason a cron monitor reports "not executed on time" when the job actually did run.
