Skip to content

Troubleshooting task scheduler issues

Note

This feature is available in Enterprise, and Ultimate editions only.

User Authentication and Corporate Security

Important

Scheduled tasks don’t work when the Master password is enabled.

When you:

  • Enable enterprise security for database credentials.
  • Use mail server authentication to send data transfer results.

These settings won’t work in scheduled tasks by default. To fix this, use one of the following:

  • switch to OS-specific encryption (Integrated security)
  • enable Automation (console) mode to run tasks without password prompts

OS-specific encryption and Automation (console) mode don’t use the Master password, so they are less secure. Credentials are still encrypted but could be at risk if someone gets access to your computer.

To configure scheduled tasks without the Master password:

  1. Go to Preferences -> General -> Security.

  2. Either:

    • switch to Integrated security
    • or enable Automation (console) mode

Info

For more details on configuring security, see Security.

Windows Task Scheduler

There are two implementations of the Windows scheduler present:

  1. CLI-based (Legacy): uses schtasks.exe to communicate with the scheduler; sensitive to locale-dependent data, such as Unicode names and date-time format.
  2. COM-based (New): uses COM API to communicate with the scheduler; more flexible and provides more features than the CLI version.

COM-based implementation is used by default, starting from the 21.1 version of DBeaver EE.

Excluding legacy Scheduler

If you encounter an error in Windows which contains the following text: com.sun.jna.platform.win32.COM.COMException,

do the following:

  1. Open the file dbeaver.ini.

    Tip

    Detailed instructions on finding dbeaver.ini are available in our article.

  2. Place the line -Ddbeaver.scheduler.windows.legacy=true below the -vmargs line.

Windows Task Scheduler - incorrect date format

Applicable to legacy Scheduler

If you encounter an error in Windows which looks like this:

ERROR: Invalid Start Date (Date should be in %some_format% format).

do the following:

  1. Open the file dbeaver.ini in the directory with your DBeaver installation
  2. Place the line -Ddbeaver.scheduler.windows.dateFormat=%some_format% (where %some_format% is a format from the error message) below the -vmargs line.

This flag is available starting from the 7.3.4 EA version of DBeaverEnterprise and might be removed in the future.

MacOS

Unable to read or write to crontab

When scheduling tasks on macOS 10.15 or newer versions, the OS will prompt you to elevate DBeaver's permissions to administer your computer. If you do not grant these permissions, DBeaver will fail to schedule your tasks with an error Unable to read or write to crontab. To bypass this, simply restart DBeaver and try to schedule the task again. The operating system will prompt you to elevate the permissions again. If macOS never prompted to do that in the first place, you could grant Full disk access permissions in the macOS settings. Here is how to do that:

  1. Open System Preferences
  2. Click on Security & Privacy
  3. Choose the Privacy tab
  4. Choose the Full Disk Access folder
  5. Unlock the preferences lock to the bottom if it is locked
  6. Click the + button
  7. Select DBeaver in the file picker that opens
  8. Click Open
  9. Close the lock

Tasks from password protected projects cannot be run

You need to pass a password for one or more projects via the command-line interface.

To do so, you need to set the dbeaver.project.password parameter in the external configuration file like so:

# You can specify a single password for all projects:
dbeaver.project.password=p4$$w0rd

# Otherwise, you can specify a list of passwords for given projects:
dbeaver.project.password=@General:p4$$w0rd,@Other:12345

The syntax for a single entry is @ <name of the project> : <password of the project>; others are separated by the , symbol.

Note

@ and : symbols are mandatory.

Tasks fail with a security error when run from the command line

If your task fails with a DBSecurityException, the problem is your current encryption method. Master password and Integrated security both require an active user session to unlock credentials - they don’t work in headless ( console) mode.

To fix this, switch to the Automation (console) encryption method:

  1. Go to Window -> Preferences -> General -> Security.
  2. Under Encryption Method, select Automation (console).
  3. Select Apply and Close.

Tip

For setup and management details, see Automation security.