Zactonz Cron Doctor · What it checks

Checks run every time the dashboard is opened. They are ordered by how much they matter, and a check that cannot finish is reported as one degraded finding rather than taking the page down.

Needs attention#

Check	What it means
A line in the crontab is not a cron job	A line is neither a comment, a setting nor a job. Cron usually refuses to load the whole crontab, which silently stops every job in it.
The crontab has Windows line endings	Cron passes the carriage return to the shell, so the command fails with a confusing "No such file or directory".
Points at a file that is not there	A path in the command does not exist in the account. Usually a script that was moved, renamed or deleted.
The last run failed	The last run, or the last several, exited non-zero. The captured output is on the job page.
It has not run when it should have	The job was due and there is no record of it running.
Cron email is switched off	`MAILTO` is empty, so cron will never send mail about anything.
Other users can read the Cron Doctor folder	The folder holding captured output is readable by other accounts on the server.

Worth fixing#

Check	What it means
Runs PHP from a generic path	The job runs `php` or `/usr/bin/php` rather than the site's EasyApache binary. On cPanel `/usr/bin/php` is usually `php-cgi`. One-click fix.
WordPress cron is triggered more than once	More than one line drives WordPress cron for the same installation, so scheduled tasks run more often than intended.
WordPress is still running its own cron as well	A real cron job drives WordPress cron but `DISABLE_WP_CRON` is not set, so tasks run twice and busy pages get slower. Cron Doctor only reads `wp-config.php`; it does not change it.
Throws its output away	Everything the job prints, errors included, goes to `/dev/null`. One-click fix once the job is monitored.
Runs are overlapping	Runs are being skipped because the previous one is still going.
The last run was stopped at its time limit	The job reached the limit set for it.
A stopped job may have left work running	The server has neither `timeout` nor `setsid`, so background work may survive a time limit.
The command has an unclosed quote	The shell may interpret it very differently from what was intended.
The same job appears twice	An identical schedule and command on two lines, so the command runs twice.
The schedule cannot be read	Syntax outside what Cron Doctor parses. The job is still listed and still recorded; only the overdue judgement is unavailable.
Cron Doctor is in read-only mode	Commands cannot be run on this account, so nothing will be written.
The runner in your home directory is out of date	The copy there does not match the installed plugin. One click repairs it.

Suggestions#

Check	What it means
Uses a different PHP version from the site	The job runs one EasyApache version while the site it belongs to is set to another. One-click fix.
WordPress cron runs very often	Most sites are fine with every five or fifteen minutes.
Output is still being discarded	The job is recorded, but the command still ends with a redirection to `/dev/null`. One-click fix.
It nearly takes as long as the gap between runs	Runs will start overlapping if the job gets any slower.
The command contains a credential	A password or token on the command line is visible to anyone who can list processes, and sits in the crontab in plain text.
Runs only when the server restarts	`@reboot` has no next scheduled time, so it can never be judged overdue.
Jobs that are not monitored yet	Nothing is being recorded about them.
Time limits cannot be enforced cleanly here	Neither `timeout` nor `setsid` is available to the account.

What it will not do on its own#

Cron Doctor never edits a crontab without being asked, never changes wp-config.php, and never deletes a cron job. The one-click fixes rewrite a command; each says exactly what it will change before you press it, and the crontab is backed up first.

Credentials are masked in the command shown in the interface. That is a convenience for screenshots, not a security control — the real value is still in the crontab and in the process list while the job runs, and the interface says so.