The cron log at /var/log/cron
gives me the following when I reboot the system or manually start cron (with /etc/init.d/cron start
command):
Jul 2 10:17:31 monserver /usr/sbin/cron[17386]: (CRON) INFO (pidfile fd = 3)
Jul 2 10:17:31 monserver /usr/sbin/cron[17387]: (CRON) STARTUP (fork ok)
Jul 2 10:17:31 monserver /usr/sbin/cron[17387]: (CRON) DEATH (Can't create reboot check file)
Verified that cron is truly not running with ps aux | grep cron
This server has recently had permissions issues with other applications (nagios for one). I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case here, but I haven't been able to track down the location of this "reboot check file". It's an older Debian system (ver 5.0.2).
Please let me know if more info is required