Crontabs and PHP

[Anon]

Hi,

I am trying to make a crontab that runs a PHP script every 10 minutes. The script gets information from all my database tables, turns them into the "INSERT INTO" queries, and emails them to me. The script itself works fine when I use it in netscape, but the crontab doesn't want to use it. here is the email I get when crontab tries to run the script...

www/video/mailDB.php: ?php: No such file or directory
www/video/mailDB.php: //: is a directory
www/video/mailDB.php: syntax error near unexpected token mysql_connect('host','user','pass')'
www/video/mailDB.php: www/video/mailDB.php: line 5: mysql_connect('host','user','pass');'

Just so you know, host, user, and pass are different in the script. i just changed them for the sake of posting here.

Anyway, here is why my crontab looks like...

0,10,20,30,40,50 www/video/mailDB.php

the directory my crontab txt file is in is...

/

my main web directory is

/www

the directory the script is in is

/www/video/

If I were to use "/www/video/mailDB.php" rather than "www/video/mailDB.php" in the crontab file, I get an error thru email saying that the file cannot be found.

Also, I checked my web-hosts server info, and it says under the Apache area "Loaded Modules : mod_php4". (there are other mods, but that one stood out). Don't know if that helps any, if it does, then help me, heh

[Anon]

You can't run a PHP file that way unless three conditions are met: (a) you have the "standalone" or CGI version of PHP installed, and (b) the script's permissions are set as executable by you, and (c) you begin the script with the magic #!/path/to/php that will tell the operating system how to run it.

See if your Web host has lynx or wget installed. If so, use that in your crontab entry:

0,10,20,30,40,50 lynx http://localhost/video/mailDB.php

[Anon]

You might try telling the crontab that you want to use PHP as an interpreter,
or it will default to using the shell.
(the first line of your script is <?php which is shell talk for "open up file ?php and read it to me" and that doesn't work)

start your php script with:

#!/path/to/php/binary/php

or change your crontab entry to read:

0,10,20,30,40,50 /path_to_php/php -q /www/video/mailDB.php

[Anon]

Thanks, I used the lynx command in the cron file, and it works perfectly now.

[Anon]

I would strongly suggest the above method. I dislike the idea of having a url to my service scripts. Sure, the url is secret but I don't want anyone to have the even smallest chance of accessing them.

Johan