How can I tell if moodle cron is working?

I’ve just sended a messege to the server admin asking if he can set the cronjobs on the server and he asked me to tell him if everything is working right. How can I test whether the cronjobs are working or not?

Answer

You need to output Moodle cron run to the logfile, e.g. your cron.d record may look like:

* * * * * www-data /usr/bin/php /var/www/moodle/admin/cli/cron.php >> /var/log/vle/moodle-cron.log 2>&1

Then, the content of /var/log/vle/moodle-cron.log will tell you immediately if cron running fine. If you want to go further, you can even monitor the file for the last update using some monoring tools and get alerts if cron has stopped.