Cronjob fails in AIX with cron: 0481-087 The c queue maximum run limit has been reached

Here is an example of cronjob failure troubleshooting.



# tail -2000 /var/adm/cron/log | more
If you see any errors like this one:
! cron: 0481-087 The c queue maximum run limit has been reached.
Let me show you how to fix it. You have to edit the file /var/adm/cron/queuedefs. Go to the very bottom, and check if what you see there is pretty much what I show here:
# cron values for each queue of batch jobs:
#
#      queue.xxjxxnxxw
#
# queues:
#  a – sh jobs          d – sync event
#  b – batch jobs      e – ksh jobs
#  c – cron event      f – csh jobs
#
#  xxj – maximum number of jobs in this queue (deafult 100)
#  xxn – nice value at which these jobs will run at (default 2)
#  xxw – wait time till next execution attempt (default 60 seconds)
#
#
# here is an example of a low prority (nice 20), 50 entry batch queue
# b.50j20n60w
#
Nothing, but comments means that the file has never been edited – the default number (100) of jobs can be executed by cron. Count the number of jobs in each file residing in /var/spool/cron/crontabs, then double this number (400 in our case) and put at the bottom of this file the following entry, for example:
c.400j20n60w
The entry above means that on this host cron (c) will be able to attend to 400 jobs. Now, all that you have to do is to refresh the cron daemon otherwise the chage will not be put in force