I found a bug in the code as described in this issue: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cron/+bug/1779583
The bug would not prevent the error you're seeing, however, there is a second fork() which, if it fails, will block that part of cron, which would therefore leak. So if it happens "on the wrong fork()", (1) you won't see any logs and (2) you get a cron "process" which gets stuck waiting for a second child that was never created. I included a patch too. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to cron in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1702785 Title: High memory and "can't fork" on heavy long-lived cron daemon Status in cron package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS, cron 3.0pl1-124ubuntu2 On a server with heavy cron use (a few thousand entries across cron.d / users, several runs per second, a few dozen forks running at any given time), cron will creep up in memory usage. Last I saw was 6GB RSS, at which point it will start doing: Jul 6 07:01:27 host cron[21699]: (CRON) error (can't fork) Not all runs will fail, but this trend will continue until cron is restarted. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cron/+bug/1702785/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
