Source Bashrc Doesn't Work in Cron

cron job can't source functions from bashrc

Try changing the source ~/.bashrc to . ~/.bashrc

That change will reload the contents of bashrc.

Then run_this_function should be available... if it is assigned properly as an alias.

Do you have the run_this_function declaration? - please post if you can.

Cron job does NOT get the environment variables set in .bashrc

The reason for source ~/.bashrc not working is the contents on your ~/.bashrc (default one from Ubuntu 12.04). If you look in it you will see on lines 5 and 6 the following:

# If not running interactively, don't do anything
[ -z "$PS1" ] && return

PS1 variable is set for an interactive shell, so it's absent when run via cron, even though you are executing it as a login shell. This is confirmed by contents of the file produced by /bin/bash -l -c -x 'source ~/.bashrc; echo $EDITOR > /tmp/cronjob.test':

+ source /home/plee/.bashrc
++ '[' -z '' ']'
++ return

To make source ~/.bashrc work, comment out the line that checks for presence of the PS1 variable in ~/.bashrc:

#[ -z "$PS1" ] && return

This will make bash execute the entire contents of ~/.bashrc via cron

source .bashrc in a script not working

Some platforms come with a ~/.bashrc that has a conditional at the top that explicitly stops processing if the shell is found to be non-interactive - even though bash only automatically sources ~/.bashrc in interactive (non-login) sessions anyway.

For example, on Ubuntu 18.04:

# If not running interactively, don't do anything
case $- in
    *i*) ;;
    *) return;;
esac

A similar test, seen in /etc/bash.bashrc on the same platform:

# If not running interactively, don't do anything
[ -z "$PS1" ] && return

If this is the case, sourcing ~/.bashrc from a script will have no effect, because scripts run in non-interactive shells by default.

Your options are:

• Either: deactivate the conditional in ~/.bashrc

• Or: Try to to emulate an interactive shell before invoking source ~/.bashrc.
  
  The specific emulation needed depends on the specifics of the conditional, but there are two likely approaches; you may have to employ them both if you don't know ahead of time which conditional you'll encounter:

  • set -i temporarily to make $- contain i, indicating an interactive shell.
  • If you know the contents of the line that performs the interactivity test, filter it out of the ~/.bashrc using grep, and then source the result with eval (the latter should generally be avoided, but it in this case effectively provides the same functionality as sourcing).
    
    Note that making sure that environment variable PS1 has a value is not enough, because Bash actively resets it in non-interactive shells - see this answer for background information.
    
    • eval "$(grep -vFx '[ -z "$PS1" ] && return' ~/.bashrc)"

Alternatively, if you control how your own script is invoked, you can invoke it with
bash -i script.

Crontab not using the django env variables defined in .bashrc

found the answer:
Cron not running django command

I defined these values manually inside the cron script.

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