[RESOLVED] Run cron help

esiason14

0 7 * * * cronlog "/usr/local/bin/php wget /var/www/html/fantasy_baseball_rankings/admin/getinjuries.php"
0 19 * * * cronlog "/usr/local/bin/php wget /var/www/html/fantasy_baseball_rankings/admin/getinjuries.php"

I'm trying to run these two scripts via cron at 7 AM and 7 PM, but it's not working...any help?

etully

Remove the quotes like this:

0 7 * cronlog /usr/local/bin/php wget /var/www/html/fantasy_baseball_rankings/admin/getinjuries.php

esiason14

I'm still having trouble with this...It seems that it's trying to run it, but never completes.

This is what I have so far:

0 10 cronlog /usr/local/bin/php wget /var/www/html/misc/getinjuries.php
0 22 cronlog /usr/local/bin/php wget /var/www/html/misc/getinjuries.php

file and folder of the script is chmod 755
The script opens up a log file on another site, parses it and dumps it into the db. If I run it directly from the browser...it works....I just can't get it to run via cron.
I'm on a dedicated server.

Any other reasons that you can see why this isn't completing?

etully

Sorry, the first time I looked at your crontab, the quotes jumped out at me as the immediate problem. Now that I look at it more closely, I have two comments. The first is that I don't understand what "cronlog" is. I don't see any mention of it at Google. Is it a script that you've written?

The second problem is that wget is specifically for web sites. If you want to point to a PHP file, you don't necessarily need wget. You can just say: php /directory/path/to/the/file.php

But if you explicitly need the file to get run through a web browser (maybe it's on a different server or maybe there are mod_rewrite commands or maybe your PHP script checks referer values, for example), then you need to use wget AND you need to specify a url like this: wget http://www.servername.com/file.php

Google for crontab examples and you will find lots of examples of the correct syntax.

esiason14

etully wrote:
The first is that I don't understand what "cronlog" is

whenever the cron tries to run it writes to the cronlog file. That's how I know that the job is trying to run, but never completes

etully wrote:
The second problem is that wget is specifically for web sites. If you want to point to a PHP file, you don't necessarily need wget. You can just say: php /directory/path/to/the/file.php

I thought that if you were running php scripts via cron that you had to use wget...? I guess I was wrong. I'll give it a shot without it. So if I use wget I use the full url and NOT the directory path?

etully

Correct. Either of these will work:
php /path/to/your/file.php
wget http://www.server.com/file.php

The second example is good when (A) the file is on a different server, (😎 you need the file to go through your web server for some reason. The first example is sometimes better if you don't want your web server complicating things.

A really good example of using the php command to invoke the file would be if you had a job that you didn't want the general public to accidentally find. You could put the script in a directory that absolutely can't be seen on the Internet. Imagine, for example, that you had a script that did something really powerful like wipe your database clean or moved funds from one bank account to another. If you had a disgruntled employee who left your company, he could go home, pull up a web browser and point at the file and do lots of damage. If you put the file in a directory that is outside the web tree, then wget won't be able to be used to trigger that file. wget is exactly like a web browser.

dalecosp

etully wrote:
Correct. Either of these will work:
php /path/to/your/file.php
wget http://www.server.com/file.php

Good stuff. Remember, though, that in most implementations cron(8) has little or no concept of $PATH; so that should be:

7    19    *     *      *   /path/to/your/php   /path/to/your/script
17   19    *     *      *   /path/to/wget   http://foo.com/baz

esiason14

Thanks, guys. I ended up getting this to work for me:

0 13 /usr/local/bin/php /var/www/cgi-bin/getinjuries.php
0 23 /usr/local/bin/php /var/www/cgi-bin/getinjuries.php

dalecosp

Righty-o. Also, note that the php executable has a "-q" (quiet) switch, which helps if cron (as usual) tends to mail you with any extraneous output from the php process (for example, any of a number of warnings depending on your php.ini settings).

For even more suppression (for example, you're sure the job runs properly and don't want any output mailed to you at all), keep in mind that the cron daemon's shell is usually /bin/sh, so you can:

01     3     *     *     *     /usr/local/bin/php -q /path/to/myscript.php >/dev/null 2>&1

etully

I'll see your -q flag and raise you a -O flag which does the same thing for wget. "O" for output can be directed to /dev/null if you just want to trigger the script without recording the response that the script generated.

0 9,15,21 * /usr/bin/wget -O /dev/null http://foo.com/baz