I have a python program (queue.py) that convert PDF files to SWF files. It uses pdf2swf tool to achieve that. Now my problem is when I start this program manually by "python queue.py", it works fine. But the same program when I started using crontab.
Result shows
pdf2swf -o "/var/www/code_repository/younus/staff/../staffdocs/AIK/doc/248515566214636_IMPROVEMENT_IN_ELECTRIC_LIGHTS.swf" "/var/www/code_repository/younus/staff/../staffdocs/AIK/doc/248515566214636_IMPROVEMENT_IN_ELECTRIC_LIGHTS.pdf">/dev/zero
"sh: pdf2swf: not found"
Inside crontab -e
* * * * * python /home/francis/myjobs/queue.py
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
You need to have the binary in your PATH, or specify an explicit path name. You may also need to set up the Python library path etc to match the environment of your interactive shell.
Related
I am running apython script in a shell script, but now fallen back to running the python script directly from the crontab. All commands I put in crontab work when run in the terminal.
Also made sure my daemon is running, that I can see my job in /var/spool/cron, that there is an empty /usr/lib/cron/cron.deny file and no cron.allow file.
The path used in crontab does contain the path to python3 (/usr/bin) and I have tried different ways of writing the fact that I want to run it every minute: *, */1.
Here's the cronjob:
*/1 * * * * /usr/bin/python3 /home/me/Desktop/path/to/script.py >> ~/loggg
I scattered print statements in my python script and only a few surface in loggg, so im guessing it is something in the script, but I made sure that my home environment and python3 has all the right pip packages called. Actually I know the script goes through the import phases as I get a print statement after those.
One thing possibly is I used pip package wget within the script calling on an API. I know the call works when not a cronjob, but maybe that is what is messing up the job ?
I am facing an issue of crontab does not run the python script in Raspbian GNU/Linux 9.4 (stretch) installed on a Raspberry Pi3. I have done lots of research on this topic e.g. by following the troubleshooting guide in https://askubuntu.com/questions/23009/why-crontab-scripts-are-not-working/24527#24527 , but none of them solved my issue.
The python script that I want to run is located in
/home/pi/Documents/Fork_BookManager.py
I have made sure that anyone can execute, read and change content to the above file.
I can run this file through terminal by writing
usr/bin/python3 /home/pi/Documents/Fork_BookManager.py
I know the file is running, because the Fork_BookManager.py is using selenium to open a web browser, and I see this web browser being opened. There is no error observed when running the Fork_BookManager.py file from terminal.
In terminal executed
crontab -e
Using nano as editor, I first verified that crontab acutally worked by
* * * * * env > /home/pi/Documents/env.output
After a minute there is a env.output file in Documents folder with below parameters.
LANGUAGE=da_DK.UTF-8
HOME=/home/pi
LOGNAME=pi
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin
LANG=da_DK.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/sh
LC_ALL=da_DK.UTF-8
PWD=/home/pi
I noticed that the path from crontab is different from the path when env is called from terminal as I will have the below path if I call env from terminal
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games
So I know that crontab -e was working since I otherwise would not have got the env.output file created in Documents folder. I proceed by calling crontab -e from terminal and copied the path from env into the crontab like below
PATH = /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games
* * * * * /usr/bin/python3 /home/pi/Documents/Fork_BookManager.py
Saved the script and waited. Nothing happend.
To summerize I have:
Made sure that the Fork_BookManager.py is executable
Verified that crontab is working
Updated path from env into the crontab script
which are three largest cause of experiencing difficulties in making crontab to work according to this guide
https://askubuntu.com/questions/23009/why-crontab-scripts-are-not-working/24527#24527
Still it is not working. What have I missed? Is there a better practice to achieve what I want, namely to execute the python script once a minute without doing it directly from the python script itself such as a while loop with a time.sleep(60)
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
I even tried to expand the path in crontab script by
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games:/usr/bin:/home/pi/Documents
in an attempt to specify in which folder the python3 and Fork_BookManager.py is located. Still no luck.
I have a strange problem of being to able to run a bash script from commandline but not from the crontab entry for root. I am running Ubuntu 12.04.
* * * * 1-5 root /home/xxxxxx/jmeter/VerificationService-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/jmeter-cron-randomise.sh >> /home/xxxxxxx/jmeter/VerificationService-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/cron.log
If I run the script from the cmd line using bash, it works fine but sh fails with following error:
> jmeter-cron-randomise.sh: 7: jmeter-cron-randomise.sh: arithmetic
> expression: expecting primary: " % 1 "
Having googled the problem, it seems like standard shell doesn't have the same math operators, like % (modulus), as bash. I'm Not sure why the cron job is failing in the script? I am assuming it is because it's not using the bash shell? It's definitely being fired by the cron daemon (can see it in /var/log/syslog). Any help much appreciated.
You likely need to tell cron that the shell to use is the bash shell as it defaults to sh. You can do that for all crontab entries by putting this line in your crontab:
SHELL=/bin/bash
Note that this will cause all scripts in the crontab to be run under bash which may not be what you want. If you want to change the crontab line itself to just run bash, change it to this:
* * * * 1-5 root /bin/bash /home/xxxxxx/jmeter/VerificationService-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/jmeter-cron-randomise.sh >> /home/xxxxxxx/jmeter/VerificationService-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/cron.log 2>&1
Note that I have also caused stderr to be written to the cron.log file (2>&1) which may not be what you want but is pretty common practice. This may help you further diagnose errors from the script.
In case this helps anyone: for me this appeared to be because I had ended up with "DOS" line endings (CR-LF) instead of "unix" line endings (LF). This can be checked using od or your favourite hex dump tool, e.g.:
od -c <script_file>
... and look for \r\n instead of just \n.
It seems (and this article supports it) that the CR character stops the "shebang" from working because it's interpreted as part of the shell executable's filename.
(The line endings themselves appeared because the file came from a git repository and was transferred via a Windows machine).
I also encountered this problem trying to schedule a database backup as root and it made me pull my hair out! I was working on a CentOS 7 box.
Whenever I would check /var/spool/mail/root I would see a log:
sh: root: command not found, yet the command would run perfectly in the terminal.
This is what worked for me:
I created the crontab entry using crontab -e while logged in as root.
Using the command above as an example:
* * * * 1-5 root /home/xxxxxx/jmeter/VerificationService-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/jmeter-cron-randomise.sh >> /home/xxxxxxx/jmeter/VerificationService-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/cron.log
I deleted the root user entry like:
* * * * 1-5 /home/xxxxxx/jmeter/VerificationService-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/jmeter-cron-randomise.sh >> /home/xxxxxxx/jmeter/VerificationService-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/cron.log
That solved my problem.
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
I'm trying to make the following script run at 17:00 everyday on Raspbmc using crontab. Cronjob scheduler is activated and running, but the script does not get executed. The crontab I used is:
0 17 * * * python /home/pi/.kodi/userdata/test.py
and my script is:
import xbmc
xbmc.executebuiltin("PlayMedia(/home/pi/.kodi/userdata/playlists/music/test.m3u)")
xbmc.executebuiltin("PlayerControl(Random)")
I could use a service called "XBMC Alarm clock", it works, but I need the songs to be shuffled!
What am I doing wrong?
I figured it out, I had to execute the following through SSH:
1).sudo apt-get install xbmc-eventclients-xbmc-send
2).xbmc-send --action='RunScript("/home/pi/.kodi/userdata/test.py")' (to test if the script works through SSH)
or
3).0 17 * * * xbmc-send --action='RunScript("/home/pi/.kodi/userdata/test.py")' (to set the crontab)
Of course you need to make the script executable (755 permissions) and set the python env, as previously mentioned.
Thanks for the the replies!
I've never used Raspbmc but since you are using python:
have you made your test.py executable? (eg: 755 permissions on the file)
set the python env in test.py
I tend to prefer the second option when working with python files and add at the top of my file something like this:
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
R.