Start, stop and control the Cron service on an Ubuntu/Debian system.

sudo service cron start
sudo service cron stop
sudo service cron restart

---

Sundry Cron items

To prevent cron jobs from triggering e-mails, add this to the end of the command:

*/30 * * * * /path/to/command/goes/here/example.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

---

Redirecting Cron status messages to /var/log/cron.log on a CentOS/RedHat system.

Open up /etc/syslog.conf and uncomment the line starting with cron.* to get Cron status messages sent to /var/log/cron.log.

sudo nano /etc/syslog.conf

Now restart the rsyslog service:

sudo /etc/init.d/sysklogd restart

Now restart the Cron service:

sudo /etc/init.d/cron restart

---

Redirecting Cron status messages to /var/log/cron.log on an Ubuntu/Debian system.

Open up /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf and uncomment the line starting with cron.* to get Cron status messages sent to /var/log/cron.log:

sudo nano /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf

Now restart the rsyslog service:

sudo service rsyslog restart

Now restart the Cron service:

sudo service cron restart