Cron fails to run

["David" <debian-user@startupanywhere.org>]

I have two machines with Debian on them.  One is pure stable and the other
is mostly testing.

Neither machine can successfully run cron.daily.  Unlike a previous
poster, anacron is not installed.  Various tasks are started but never
complete as shown in the following ps ax listing for cron tasks from the
"stable" machine:

 6417 ?        S      0:00 /USR/SBIN/CRON
 6418 ?        S      0:00 /bin/sh -c test -e /usr/sbin/anacron ||
run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily
 6419 ?        S      0:00 run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily
 6422 ?        S      0:00 /bin/sh /etc/cron.daily/find
 6423 ?        S      0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/updatedb --localuser=nobody
 6438 ?        S      0:00 sort -f
 6439 ?        S      0:00 /usr/lib/locate/frcode
 6842 ?        S      0:00 /USR/SBIN/CRON
 6843 ?        S      0:00 /bin/sh -c test -e /usr/sbin/anacron ||
run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily
 6844 ?        S      0:00 run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily
 6847 ?        S      0:00 /bin/sh /etc/cron.daily/find
 6848 ?        S      0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/updatedb --localuser=nobody
 6863 ?        S      0:00 sort -f
 6864 ?        S      0:00 /usr/lib/locate/frcode