Compiling script for CRON

Anon

I have read all that I could find about it in this forum, but, sorry, I did not quite understand - HOW (exact steps, for it is smth quite new to me, I'm not familiar with Unix) to compile PHP script which I want to execute with CRON - in UNIX (to be exact, I have FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE). What I currently have are advices like "Compile your PHP as CGI and simply add it to cron using crontab". Well, I know how to edit and I know the structure of crontab. But, after I have compiled, how exactly should I include my file into cron? With full path? Or how?
I will really appreciate any advices.

Anon

Annchen,

I've been searching high and low for instructions on how to compile a PHP script as a CGI and execute it from crontab.

Sounds like this is pretty much what you were trying to do. Did you have any luck finding a solution?

Anon

Heh, I'm trying to do the same!!

Anyway, what I do know, is that you compile PHP as a cgi (not the script). And this means rather than running as an apache mod, when you execute a .php file, it works like perl, and just runs it through php.exe. This means it'll run through Cron (it won't otherwise, since Cron doesn't know it needs Apache).

AFAIK, you may have to remove the <?php tags (not too sure bout that), and you may need to put "#!/usr/bin/php" at the top of the script.

HTH

Anon

Sounds like you guys are in the same delimna as me. I've got PHP running as an apache mod and don't want to break something trying to switch to using cgi.

I wonder if it is possible to have cron call apache to run the .php page?

I saw an example of how to cron with lynx (text webbrowser) to dump the file in and have the module parse it without having to go to cgi.

http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/80/fid/32