chronic (moreutils)
Shares rank 38 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
Wraps a cron job so it stays quiet on success and mails its full output when the command fails, so failures surface without reviewing logs.
Wraps a cron job so it stays quiet on success and mails its full output when the command fails, so failures surface without reviewing logs.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Surfaces cron failures without manual log review
“Very useful for knowing when a cron fails without needing to manually review every log run.”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 on Hacker News “cronic combined with a healthcheck, immediate failure alerting and integration”
Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Sigabrt.dev – cronjob monitor with an SSH TUI” Quiet unless a job fails
“You could just wrap cronic around the command and immediately receive the full output per mail when it fails.”
Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Sigabrt.dev – cronjob monitor with an SSH TUI” “That way you don't need to worry about things sent to STDOUT spamming you.”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 on Hacker News
Other privilege escalation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other privilege escalation tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 86 privilege escalation tools, rankedWhat people said
7 of the 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“cronic combined with a healthcheck, immediate failure alerting and integration”
“You could just wrap cronic around the command and immediately receive the full output per mail when it fails.”
“This is great, I like this.”
“Useful enough to justify registering on HN.”
“Those are all solid practices! I use chronic too, and proper exit codes are essential.”
“Very useful for knowing when a cron fails without needing to manually review every log run.”
“That way you don't need to worry about things sent to STDOUT spamming you.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.