[RESOLVED] Remote Data Collection Theory

madwormer2

My friend runs an internet radio station, and I run the website, and everything is in place, etc. etc. but I've now run into a bit of a problem.

I have been asked to collect information on every single song played, and the amount of current listeners when the song has started. It needs to update every time that a song is played.

Now, my problem is that the data is displayed on a remote server admin page, which is publicly accessible, but I have no way of knowing when the next song is going to be played.

I'm considering running a cron job to get the page every 2 minutes, but I'm not sure that the free host (which is provided by the same people who provide the shoutcast hosting) will like me getting data from a remote server every two minutes (or less depending on the minimum song length on the internet radio station.)

My other problem is that if this is the best option for me, I haven't the foggiest idea on how to use a cron job. 😕

And on a completely unrelated side note, does anyone know of any automatic ID3 tagging software that he can tag his songs with. Over 50% of them have false, incomplete or missing ID3 tag data. (Meaning that my efforts will be completely wasted if he doesnt get the tags sorted)

Any suggestions on the best way to go about this problem would be very helpful for me.

Thanks in advance 😉

dalecosp

I can tell you how to use a real cron(8). Do you have shell access?

madwormer2

Unsure, but I doubt it.

The Cpanel does make a few mentions about crontab though, so I'm assuming I can use it, but it doesn't have a widget to do it directly on there.

Yes, I can access the shell. Not sure if I have much permission to do much though.

dalecosp

madwormer2 wrote:
Yes, I can access the shell. Not sure if I have much permission to do much though.

Try this:

crontab -l

It should show you your crontab file.

If you receive no errors (other than possibly some type of "file doesn't exist" error), then you'll want to check your EDITOR environment variable. env | grep EDIT should do it for most any type of shell.

EDITOR will be the program used to edit your crontab file, so if it's something you don't know how to use, you'd best set it to something you're familiar with. Then, "crontab -e" to edit the file. Set up your crontab thus:

#min    hour    day     mon     weekday         command

30       */12        *           *           *               /path/to/some/script

HTH,

madwormer2

It's helpful :p

BUT I get this: no crontab for neon

Meaning I don't have a crontab?

So, I'm gonna go search some alternatives.

Thanks :p

I'm accessing shell via a PHP script, so... yeh.

dalecosp

No problems there, then. "No crontab for user" simply means the file doesn't exist yet. Run "crontab -e" and actually type something (probably needs to be relatively valid, so maybe a comment like, "#this is my crontab") and then try crontab -l.

Sounds like you've got a pretty good setup, but that could be a tad preliminary.... 🙂

madwormer2

I just get a big mess, and nothing happens.

$ crontab -e
[m[m[0m[H[2J[24;1H"/tmp/crontab.XXXXgMpz1i" 0L, 0C[2;1H[1m[34m~ [3;1H~ [4;1H~ [5;1H~ [6;1H~ [7;1H~ [8;1H~ [9;1H~ [10;1H~ [11;1H~ [12;1H~ [13;1H~ [14;1H~ [15;1H~ [16;1H~ [17;1H~ [18;1H~ [19;1H~ [20;1H~ [21;1H~ [22;1H~ [23;1H~ [1;1H[24;1H[0mVim: Error reading input, exiting...
Vim: Finished.
[24;1H
no crontab for neon - using an empty one
Vim: Warning: Output is not to a terminal
Vim: Warning: Input is not from a terminal
crontab: "/bin/vi" exited with status 1
$ crontab -l
no crontab for neon

Probably something to do with the fact I'm accessing via a PHP script because I can't connect directly.

dalecosp

Definitely.

Alternative might be to upload the crontab (text) file and cat it to the proper location, but not sure where that might be. /var/cron/tabs on BSDish systems, not sure about Linux.

madwormer2

Hmm, I get permission denied when trying to move it to any potential folders that it may go in.

I'm pretty sure now that they don't want me to set up a cron job. I'll email them and see what they say.

madwormer2

Hey! Me again!

I set up the cron job!

And it's giving me permission denied on the script.

Any suggestions?

madwormer2

All is working now :p

Cheers for the help.