Crond shortcuts is broken

[arkadiy]

Hi everyone!
I tired to configure task sheduling according to the wiki https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/base-system/cron
Version of OpenWrt is 22.03.3, r20028-43d71ad93e, my router is Asus gP-500 v2.
When I tried to use shorcut @daily in my task specification, cron daemon just ignored it and my task doesn't sheduled. I noticed it when I read logs next day.
After that I replaced shortcut @daily by it's equivalent '0 0 * * *' and my task sheduled just as planed.
So my guess is that cron shorcuts on 22.03.3 is broken.
P.s. every time there was EOL (empty line) in crontab, so that is not the point.

I found two topics dated by 22 year where people complaines the same issues:

[Solved] Cron.err crond: user root: parse error

@ tags aren’t supported Pick a time of day and set up the time in a more traditional format

Can´t get crontab working

The @reboot shortcut is not recognized by BusyBox crond, so use /etc/rc.local instead.

May be we should either fix wiki, or fix crond shortcuts?

[jow]

They’re not broken but simply not implemented by busybox crond.

[hnyman]

@arkadiy

tried to use shorcut @daily

It is actually implemented in busybox since 2017, but apparently our default config keeps that disabled.

• https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=blob;f=package/utils/busybox/Config-defaults.in;h=7b6cf900335c40f814530f5beac4b6b123510592;hb=HEAD#l2012

• https://git.busybox.net/busybox/tree/miscutils/crond.c#n38

• https://git.busybox.net/busybox/commit/miscutils/crond.c?id=75fbea3879b251ef4a66c6da23a6c0e3a706c016

Edit:
When I have done the busybox version bump to 1.28.2 in 2018, I have apparently kept the new feature disabled.

busybox: update to 1.28.2

[arkadiy]

In any case we have situation when instructions in wiki doesn't lead user to result, that he wanted to achieve. In other words information in wiki disinforms users, so it should be edited.
In my case I had to make a trip for 15 km to reboot openvpn service in office because of not working crond shortcuts.
I'm new to OpenWRT forum and wiki. Who can edit wiki? I tried to login using my credentials that I use here, but it seams that it uses another account infrastructure.
What should I do next to make edit of wiki about crond shrotcuts. Any advice/instructions?

[hnyman]

I added a note to wiki.

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/base-system/cron?#task_specification

Shortcuts require compiling busybox with FEATURE_CROND_SPECIAL_TIMES enabled in the busybox compile options.

[arkadiy]

Thank you, hnyman, for editing!
But, I want to say that for the normal user (like me) it is not clear that FEATURE_CROND_SPECIAL_TIMES is disabled by default in OpenWRT. Can you add that info to this note? It can be like:
"Crond shortcuts is not implemented by default in OpenWRT. Shortcuts require compiling busybox with FEATURE_CROND_SPECIAL_TIMES enabled in the busybox compile options."