Start bash script from bash script as cronjob - linux

I'm trying to start a bash script(test.sh) from a second bash script that runs as a cronjob(startTest.sh) on Ubuntu 14.04.
Cron is running and both scripts work perfectly if called from command line.
startTest.sh looks like this:
#!bin/bash
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/home/username/path/to/script
bash /home/username/path/to/script/test.sh
test.sh looks like this:
#!/bin/bash
touch it_works.txt
My crontab entry looks like this
* * * * * /usr/local/bin/startTest.sh

Best practice is generally not to use relative paths (unless you do an explicit cd) in scripts run as cron jobs.
crond is probably not running from whatever directory you expect it to. Depending on what user this cron job runs as, the script either does not have permission to create it_works.txt in crond's current working directory, or it is creating the file and you're looking in the wrong place.

Related

Running `wsgetmail` service via Crontab job CentOS 6

I want to run the below via Crontab job and not working but when put them in sh file and run the sh manually it works fine.
Sh file path: /opt/etc/rt4/test.sh and the content as below:
wsgetmail --config=account01.json
wsgetmail --config=account02.json
Running manually:
sh /opt/etc/rt4/test.sh it works fine.
Crontab:
*/1 * * * * /opt/etc/rt4/test.sh
Crontab runs this file but those commands are not working.
I have other Crontab jobs and they are working fine as intended.
The crontab and terminal are two different environments, the wsgetmail perl module command is recognizable for terminal but to make it recognizable for corntab we have to add the full path to the module (wsgetmail) in the shell script.
in this case test.sh should looks like this:
#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/wsgetmail --config=account01.json
/usr/local/bin/wsgetmail --config=account02.json
Running manually: sh /opt/etc/rt4/test.sh it works fine.
Crontab: */1 * * * * /opt/etc/rt4/test.sh
Those are not the same thing, as 1st line shebang, and chmod a+x test.sh, will affect the behavior.
Either remove "sh" when running manually, or prepend it to the cron command.
Run $ id, and determine if that's different
from how the cron command runs, perhaps by
having cron log id output.
Running as yourself manually,
versus as root (uid=0) under cron,
can change the behavior of that command.
Numerous other things are different
under cron, such as lack of a pty.
Take a look at $ env | sort manually.
Then run it under crond, and note the huge difference.
Pay special attention to PATH.
It is likely to be much shorter under cron,
and that can lead to "command not found"
diagnostics.
But you chose not to share any diagnostic
error messages with us,
so coming up with a definitive diagnosis
of this amounts to a mind reading exercise.

cronjob does not execute a script that works fine standalone

I have my php script file in /var/www/html/dbsync/index.php. When cd /var/www/html/dbsync/ and run php index.php it works perfectly.
I want to call PHP file through sh file, the location of SH file is as below
/var/www/html/dbsync/dbsync.sh
This is the content of the dbsync.sh file is:
/usr/bin/php /var/www/html/dbsync/index.php >> /var/www/html/dbsync/myscript.log 2>&1 -q -f
When I cd /var/www/html/dbsync/ and run ./dbsync.sh it works perfectly as well.
Now if I set up crontab as below:
1 * * * * /var/www/html/dbsync/dbsync.sh /var/www/html/dbsync
However, this crontab is not working as expected.
What can be wrong?
As seen in comments, the problem is that you are not defining what program should be used to execute the script. Take into account that a cronjob is executed in a tiny environment; there, not much can be assumed. This is why we define full paths, etc.
So you need to say something like:
1 * * * * /bin/sh /var/www/html/dbsync/dbsync.sh /var/www/html/dbsync
# ^^^^^^^
/bin/sh being the binary you want to use to execute the script.
Otherwise, you can set execution permissions to the script and add a shell-script header telling it what interpreter to use:
#!/bin/sh
If you do this, adding the path of the binary is not necessary.
From Troubleshooting common issues with cron jobs:
Using relative paths. If your cron job is executing a script of some
kind, you must be sure to use only absolute paths inside that script.
For example, if your script is located at /path/to/script.phpand
you're trying to open a file called file.php in the same directory,
you cannot use a relative path such as fopen(file.php). The file must
be called from its absolute path, like this: fopen(/path/to/file.php).
This is because cron jobs do not necessarily run from the directory in
which the script is located, so all paths must be called specifically.
Also, I understand you want to run this every minute. If so, 1 * * * * won't do. Intead, it will run at every 1st minute past every hour. So if you want to run it every minute, say * * * * *.
It is important to understand "login shell" and "interactive shell" what they means.
login shell: is briefly when you sign in with ssh session and get a terminal window where you can enter shell commands. After login the system executes some files(.bashrc) and sets some environment variables such as the PATH variable for you.
interactive shell :After login on a system, you can startup manually shell terminal(s). The system executes some profile file assigned to your account (.bash_profile, .bash_login,.profile). This files also sets some environment variables and initialize PATH variable for your manually opened shell session.
By OS started shell scripts and cron jobs does not fit in above mentioned way for starting a shell. Therefore no any system scripts(.bashrc) or user profiles are executed. This means our PATH variable is not initialized. Shell commands could not found because PATH variable does not point to right places.
This explains why your script runs successfully if you start it manually but fails when you start it via crontab.
Solution-1:
Use absolute path of every shell command instead of only the command name used in your script file(s).
instead of "awk" use "/usr/bin/awk"
instead of "sed" use "/bin/sed"
Solution-2: Initialize environment variables and especially the PATH variable before executing shell scripts!
method 1, add this header in your dbsync.sh:
#!/bin/bash -l
method 2, add bash -l in your cron file:
1 * * * * bash -l /var/www/html/dbsync/dbsync.sh /var/www/html/dbsync

Scheduling jobs in Linux using crontab

I am using Linux Centos to schedule a job.
I have created a shell script file called Im_daily_loads.sh to run the job at 12:42PM everyday.
with the following comands:
#!/bin/sh
42 12 * * * cd $pdi; ./kitchen.sh -file="/opt/kff/software/pdi/5.0.1.A/data- integration/projects/IML/code/stg/IML_Load_Frm_SRC_To_PSA.kjb" -level=Basic > -logfile="/opt/kff/software/pdi/5.0.1.A/data-integration/projects/IML/log/iml_daily_loads.err.log"
Then loaded the file into crontab by using the issuing the following command crontab Im_daily_loads.sh, but my job is not running.
What would be the problem?
Why not just use
crontab -e
as the user you plan to execute the job as, enter the job, save and exit the editor?
Also, it looks like you need to define $pdi in your script. How is crontab supposed to know where your script is located?
first , run a very simple job to be shure crontab works at all.
for example
set > /tmp/crontab_works.log 2>&1
it will write down all variables. so you will see not all variables available in crontab

Script runs from terminal, but not cron. What edits to this script do I need to make?

I have a script used for zipping a database and site files, then dumps the output into a backup folder on the server. The script runs fine from the command line, but it will not work through cron.
After much research, I am thinking that cron cannot run it in its current form because it runs in a different environment.
Here is the script, saved as file_name.sh
#!/bin/bash
NOW=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H%M")
FILE="website.com.$NOW.tar"
BACKUP_DIR="/backupfolder"
WWW_DIR="/var/www/website/"
DB_USER="dbuser"
DB_PASS="dbpw"
DB_NAME="dbname"
DB_FILE="website.com.$NOW.sql"
WWW_TRANSFORM='s,^var/www/website,www,'
DB_TRANSFORM='s,^backupfolder,database,'
tar -cvf $BACKUP_DIR/$FILE --transform $WWW_TRANSFORM $WWW_DIR
mysqldump -u$DB_USER -p$DB_PASS $DB_NAME > $BACKUP_DIR/$DB_FILE
tar --append --file=$BACKUP_DIR/$FILE --transform $DB_TRANSFORM $BACKUP_DIR/$DB_FILE
rm $BACKUP_DIR/$DB_FILE
gzip -9 $BACKUP_DIR/$FILE
I currently have the script stored in /usr/local/scripts/
Is there something wrong with the above code that does not allow it to run through cron?
Which crontab should it go in? crontab -e from terminal, or /etc/crontab? They are two different files.
Several things come to mind: first, one of the most common problems with cron jobs is that generally crond runs things with a very minimal PATH (usually just /usr/bin:/bin), so if the script uses any commands from some other binaries directory, it'll fail. Where is mysqldump on your system (run which mysqldump if you aren't sure)? If this is the problem, adding PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin (or whatever's appropriate in your case) at the beginning of your script should fix it. Alternately, you can set PATH in the crontab file (put this line before the entry that runs your script).
If that's not the problem, my next step would be to capture the script's output, with something like:
1 1 * * * /usr/local/scripts/file_name.sh >/tmp/file_name.log 2>&1
... and see if the output is informative. BTW, as #tripleee mentioned, the format of your cron entry is suitable for the files crontab -e edits, but not for /etc/crontab. The /etc version has an additional field specifying which user to run the job as, e.g.
1 1 * * * eric /usr/local/scripts/file_name.sh >/tmp/file_name.log 2>&1
Best practice is to always use crontab -e (the resultant files are usually in /var/spool/cron/) and this works on every unix and linux platform I ever worked on.
Other common issues with cron execution are missing environment variables. Any environment variables set in .bash_profile (or .profile if you use korn shell) will not necessarily be present in the cron environment. This can be overcome by including them in your script.
As Gordon said, paths are another suspect. You can always full path you executables in your script (eg /bin/mysqldump). Some of the more cynical of us do this anyway to make sure we are executing what we intended as apposed to some other file of the same name in the current path.
I can only guess at your specific problem since you fixed it by creating /scripts, that perhaps the permissions on /usr/local/scripts directory did not allow execution by the cron user?
I have had to remove the extension (.sh) for cron to run in some instances.
So I fixed it. Not sure what the problem was, but this worked for me.
I originally had the scripts located in /usr/local/scripts/
I created a new directory here - /scripts/ and moved the scripts there. The new crontab -e command looked like this:
1 1 * * * bash /scripts/file_name.sh
Works perfectly. Again, I am not sure what the issue was before, but it works now.

crontab issue while scheduling

I have a perl script and I scheduled it to run daily through crontab. The script is working fine if executed. But while executing through crontab, it's posting error mail to my mailbox.
Is there any thing that I should modify to successfully execute the script through crontab?
It could be a $PATH problem. Ensure that your Perl script either is on a place mentioned by $PATH, or has an absolute path in the crontab. This is also valid for any script or program that you run in the Perl script. The $PATH variable usually has to be set inside the crontab file.
It could be a file used in the Perl script having relative path, which could work when executed manually, but fail when run by cron (different working directories).
Does the Perl script have execute permissions (the x mode bit set)? This is not necessary when it's run with perl /path/to/script.pl, but would fail when it's run with /path/to/script.pl.
EDITED:
Suggestions for how to fix:
Add to $PATH in the crontab (for the sample script /path/to/script.pl):
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/path/to
Remember to include other needed paths as well (e.g. /bin and /usr/ucb).
Chances are there already is a PATH definition in the file. In that case, just append your path to it.
Alternatively, you can specify full path in the cron job line, e.g.:
17 * * * * root /path/to/script.pl
To fix permissions:
chmod a+r+x /path/to/script.pl

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