php-files as executable / cron jobs

[Anon]

I need to run a couple of PHP scripts as cron jobs. I've seen this done by using for example lynx in the cron job and accessing the PHP script via an URL.

But I've also heard PHP scripts can be compiled and executed direcly by the cron job. But how do you compile the PHP script? The system runs on Solaris/Apache. Any suggestions?

[Anon]

why dont you just run your scripts like this:

php -q script.php 2>&1 >> /var/log/logging

[Anon]

Rather than calling the script via a url (which would then probably be accessible to the world via your webserver) you probably want to compile a standalone php binary. There are linux packages for this (do a google search for "arvin php rpm"). Or you can always compile from source. You can change a few of the options to make the standalone binary a little more secure, and then drop it in /bin or /usr/bin.

Then, you can write shell scripts using /usr/bin/php instead of /bin/sh or /bin/bash, etc. Just be sure to chmod them executable.

Lacey