How is cron supposed to bypass that?
Make sure the cron url is configured with login: admin
and not login: required
. Cron jobs "get past the login prompt" automatically. See the documentation for more information.
How can I debug what's going on?
Since a cron job is started by a GET
request to a specific url, you should be able to debug the job by just making a GET
request to that url and either see what errors the development server makes or see what is in the logs for the GET
request.