I only have access to cpanel and I have two different types of cron jobs that I would like to understand better:
This one seems to suffer time out constraints like a normal webpage does
wget --secure-protocol=TLSv1 -O /dev/null "https://www.website.com/code.php" >/dev/null 2>&1
But what about this one?
php -q /home/website/public_html/code.php >/dev/null 2>&1
How do I make sure a cron job completes?
I set the following cron tab when I'm under root user.
* * * * * wget -q --spider http://mytargeturl.com/my/url/
The codes are under the same server but owned by another user (and I couldn't set a crontab with that user). I have to request the page with wget because of MVC link system complexity.
When I run:
crontab -l -u root
I can see this crontab setting.
Why would be the reason that crontab doesn't work?
Thanks.
Your syntax looks fine and this should work. Check /var/log/cron to make sure that it is indeed running, and if so, consider logging the command's output to a file and then inspect the file to pinpoint where the problem may be.
I am trying to make a cron job for the first time but i have some problems making it work.
Here is what i have done so far:
Linux commands:
crontab -e
My cronjob looks like this:
1 * * * * wget -qO /dev/null http://mySite/myController/myView
Now when i look in:
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/
I get the following output:
marc root
if i open the file root
i see my cronjob (the one above)
However it doesnt seem like it is running.
is there a way i can check if its running or make sure that it is running?
By default cron jobs do have a log file. It should be in /var/log/syslog (depends on your system). Vouch for it and you're done. Else you can simply append the output to a log file manually by
1 * * * * wget http://mySite/myController/myView >> ~/my_log_file.txt
and see what's your output. Notice I've changed removed the quiet parameter from wget command so that there is some output.
I am trying to set up Recurring Invoices as documented on http://www.fusioninvoice.com/support/recurring-invoices but I don't understand and cant work out what to do.
I have found a alphanumeric 'key' but not sure where or what to do?
Do I need to createa file or something?
If curl is available on your system, you can schedule it to ping the URL.
Use crontab -e to edit the cron table and create a new entry. For example, this will ping the URL every day at midnight.
0 0 * * * /usr/bin/curl --silent http://your-server.com/index.php/invoices/cron/recur/your-cron-key-here &>/dev/null
I'm using a basic shell script to log the results of top, netstat, ps and free every minute.
This is the script:
/scripts/logtop:
TERM=vt100
export TERM
time=$(date)
min=${time:14:2}
top -b -n 1 > /var/log/systemCheckLogs/$min
netstat -an >> /var/log/systemCheckLogs/$min
ps aux >> /var/log/systemCheckLogs/$min
free >> /var/log/systemCheckLogs/$min
echo "Message Content: $min" | mail -s "Ran System Check script" email#domain.com
exit 0
When I run this script directly it works fine. It creates the files and puts them in /var/log/systemCheckLogs/ and then sends me an email.
I can't, however, get it to work when trying to get cron to do it every minute.
I tried putting it in /var/spool/cron/root like so:
* * * * * /scripts/logtop > /dev/null 2>&1
and it never executes
I also tried putting it in /var/spool/cron/myservername and also like so:
* * * * * /scripts/logtop > /dev/null 2>&1
it'll run every minute, but nothing gets created in systemCheckLogs.
Is there a reason it works when I run it but not when cron runs it?
Also, here's what the permissions look like:
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 326 Jul 21 01:53 logtop
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 21 01:51 systemCheckLogs
Normally crontabs are kept in "/var/spool/cron/crontabs/". Also, normally, you update it with the crontab command as this HUPs crond after you're done and it'll make sure the file gets in the correct place.
Are you using the crontab command to create the cron entry? crontab to import a file directly. crontab -e to edit the current crontab with $EDITOR.
All jobs run by cron need the interpreter listed at the top, so cron knows how to run them.
I can't tell if you just omitted that line or if it is not in your script.
For example,
#!/bin/bash
echo "Test cron jon"
When running from /var/spool/cron/root, it may be failing because cron is not configured to run for root. On linux, root cron jobs are typically run from /etc/crontab rather than from /var/spool/cron.
When running from /var/spool/cron/myservername, you probably have a permissions problem. Don't redirect the error to /dev/null -- capture them and examine.
Something else to be aware of, cron doesn't initialize the full run environment, which can sometimes mean you can run it just fine from a fully logged-in shell, but it doesn't behave the same from cron.
In the case of above, you don't have a "#!/bin/shell" up top in your script. If root is configured to use something like a regular bourne shell or cshell, the syntax you use to populate your variables will not work. This would explain why it would run, but not populate your files. So if you need it to be ksh, "#!/bin/ksh". It's generally best not to trust the environment to keep these things sane. If you need your profile run the do a ". ~/.profile" up front as well. Or a quick and dirty way to get your relatively full env is to do it from su as such "* * * * * su - root -c "/path/to/script" > /dev/null 2>&1
Just some things I've picked up over the years. You're definitely expecting a ksh based on your syntax, so you might want to be sure it's using it.
Thanks for the tips... used a little bit of each answer to get to the bottom of this.
I did have the interpreter at the top (wasn't shown here), but may have been wrong.
Am using #!/bin/bash now and that works.
Also had to tinker with the permissions of the directory the log files are being dumped in to get things working.