Oops!! Frustrated with (php) (getpwnam failed()) Cron error? We can help you with it.

php error getpwnam failed occurs due to missing entry in crontab file under /etc/cron.d.

At Bobcares, we often get requests regarding cron, as a part of our Server Management Services.

Today, let’s see how our Support Engineers fix this cron job fail for our customers.

Why and when a cron?

Cron jobs are mainly used for scheduling activities, either as recurring tasks or one-time events.

Repetitive tasks can be automated easily using cron jobs.

Cron simplifies the scenario where we need to execute tasks at an interval or at a specific time.

Our Engineers always suggest cron for such scheduled tasks for saving our customer’s valuable time.

But, we may face some errors while handling cron. Today, we are going to discuss in detail on one such error.

How we fix (php) (error getpwnam() failed)?

Recently, one of our customers approached us saying that he is getting an error like the one shown below when cron is executing.

He also mentioned that, while executing the files one by one manually, it is executing perfectly without any problem.

So, our Support Engineers checked in detail and found that this error occurs because the customer missed adding an entry in the cron file.

That is, the customer is trying to run a cron job entry defined in a user crontab file under /etc/cron.d without specifying the username.

So, we corrected the cron file by adding the username and the final cron is in the format as shown below:

* 11 * * * <username> <command/script> <parameters>

Finally, this fixed the problem.

[Need assistance to fix cron job errors? We’ll help you.]

Conclusion

In short, we discussed in detail on php error getpwnam() failed and found that failure in specifying the username leads to this error. Also, we saw how our Support Engineers fix this for our customers.