another crontab question

gnome354

I have two computers A and B. Computer A is the development machine, computer B is the live machine. I develop on computer A and update computer B with code modifications. Both are running the same version of redhat linux.

I have a line in my crontab file on computer A which executes fine.

41 5 * php -q /path/to/script/myscript.php

The script is not an executable, yet it still works. It does not matter if I had the #! /path/to/php -q line at the top of the script it still executes fine.

However, I have the same line in the crontab file on computer B and it does not work. I tried making the file executable, adding the #!... line at the top of my script before the <?php tag, still nothing. The owners are the same and with the same file permissions. I can execute the command at the command line and it work fine, but it will not work in cron.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

bricca

Is cron working correctly on B machine? Do you have other crontab entries that process as you would expect?

gnome354

I don't know. Do you have any suggestion on how to test if crontab is working? I do know that I am updated the crontab with the crontab crontab command.

bricca

I am rather new to Linux so I'm sure that I don't know the best/quickest way to know if cron is working properly. However I do know that the following will work.

Create a crontab entry like this:
* testing

This will cause cron to execute every minute. Since cron isn't sure what to do with the phrase 'testing' and assuming that sendmail is running on your system this will create a message every minute on your box. Start mail from a command line and read the messages. The messages will say something like:

/bin/sh: line 1: testing: command not found.

At least if you're getting this output you know that cron is executing as it's suppose to.

Hope this helps.

gnome354

I tried adding the * testing line to my crontab file as you suggestioned, but unfortunately I'm not getting any emails.

However, I did see mail entries for the root/hourly cron job. I guess that means it's working?

bricca

Well, I would make the same assumption as you, if you see emails from hourly jobs then it appears cron is working.

My last guess - could there be a typo in the path to your script in the crontab entry on the B machine?

Though - that would generate messages about a bad path... I'm out of ideas!

gnome354

I don't know what happened, but it works now. I guess adding the ***** testing line enabled the line above it (the line I wanted to work) work. I tested it and it works consistantly now. Thanks. Perhaps a carriage return is needed to enabled the last line of the crontab file to work.