Script Executes Successfully in Commandline But Not as a Cronjob

Script executes successfully in commandline but not as a cronjob

Ruby Version Manager (rvm) was causing the problem. I had to call the script in cron like this.

*/15 * * * * bash -c 'source /home/username/.rvm/scripts/rvm && /usr/bin/env ruby /home/username/twitter/twitter.rb friends'

cronjob does not execute a script that works fine standalone

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.

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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 * * * * *.

Bash script runs manually, but fails on crontab

The problem is probably that your $PATH is different in the manual environment from that under which crontab runs. Hence, which can't find your executables. To fix this, first print your path in the manual environment (echo $PATH), and then manually set up PATH at the top of the script you run in crontab. Or just refer to the programs by their full path.

Edit: Add this near the top of your script, before all the which calls:

export PATH="/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/opt/android-sdk-linux/tools:/opt/android-sdk-linux/platform-tools:~/usr/lib/jvm/jdk-6/bin"

Why does my bash script work in a terminal, but not when using crontab?

The user name precedes the command to run in the system crontab. Use

0 * * * * root /bin/bash /home/henry/yupdate.sh > /dev/null 2>&1

instead.

Python script runs directly via command line but does not run via shell/bash script

When you run via command line it picks path for json file and others.Cron could not find path.Be absolute in path, It will run smoothly. If absolute path not possible, try relative path with respect to CRON location path.

CronJob not running

Finally I found the solution. Following is the solution:-

1. Never use relative path in python scripts to be executed via crontab.
   I did something like this instead:-

   import os
   import sys
   import time, datetime
   
   CLASS_PATH = '/srv/www/live/mainapp/classes'
   SETTINGS_PATH = '/srv/www/live/foodtrade'
   sys.path.insert(0, CLASS_PATH)
   sys.path.insert(1,SETTINGS_PATH)
   
   import other_py_files
   

2. Never supress the crontab code instead use mailserver and check the mail for the user. That gives clearer insights of what is going.

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