[RESOLVED] running cron jobs..

IceRegent

I need some help in understanding cron jobs. What exactly does this refer to? Can I set a cron job as running a php script at a certain time? For instance, set it to run a php script to update a certain set of fields in a table every 15 minites or so? I am having a hard time getting the tech support from my web hoster to answer my questions about path names. He isnt very forthcoming and has now given me 2 very different path setups, after over 2 hours of waiting for a response.

How do I determine the path to my cron job, if I can in fact use a php script as a cron job?

devinemke

read up on cron. the basic syntax to run a PHP script is like this:

0 0 * * * /path/to/php /path/to/script.php >/path/to/output.txt 2>/path/to/error.txt

this would run "script.php" every night at midnight. you obviously need to know the path to the PHP binary and need to set the paths to your script, output and error files.

IceRegent

Unfortunately, the only way or knowledge that I have of running thr cron job, is through the cpanel interface I have through my web host provider. I do not have access to the unix shell or, linux shell, to run any commands from the command line. My options are very limited as to what I can do. The only thing I can do through the cpanel, is set up the path, the timing intervals, and the file/job to run. I supposedly got set-up with the correct path from my support specialist, and apparently the job ran once while he was on the phone with me, but, seeing as how I set it up to run every minite, and it hasnt run once since i was on the phone with him, I suspect that he manually ran it to make it look like he directed me to the correct path.

devinemke

another thing to consider is how often the cron daemon is reloaded on your host server. mine host used to only reload once a day and offered no shell access which made testing crons very frustrating. they have since changed to to reload every minute. ask your host about this. it is possible you have everything setup correctly but the server simply has not yet loaded up your new crontab.