Cronjob

[smorb]

Hello, I couldn't find somthing about cron jobs here, so can anybody tell where to find a good tutorial about setting up cron-jobs.
Actually I'm looking for a simple cron job running my php3 script once a hour and tried this here:
0 * * * * lynx -dump http://mydomain.de/myfolder/myfile.php3
but anyway it is doing nothing.
Thanx you for helping, Alex

[Skunk]

Check this out:

http://www.gdn.net/help/crontab_howto.html

[petesmc]

Try:

1 */1 * * * php /path/to/file/ /dev/null

You cannot use the http://www.domain.com/path way, you must use the total path:

/home/username/public_html/file.php

The above is what I use, your is most likely different.

[Son Nguyen]

You cannot use the http://www.domain.com/path way, you must use the total path:

Yes, since he uses lynx to fetch the page.
Also

0 0 * * * php /path/to/file/ /dev/null

should be

0 0 * * * php /path/to/file > /dev/null
# redirect to /dev/null and not passing /dev/null as a param.

[smorb]

You mean it should look like this on unix ?

0 0 * * * php /www/username/directory/file.php > /dev/null

And what about the time ? Is "0 0 * * *" correct for once a hour?

[Son Nguyen]

No, 0 0 * * * runs at midnight every day.
0 * * * * runs every hour at *:00

yes, that should be the correct command.

[petesmc]

Hi,

1. Choose what minute of the hour:
Easy one is 30
2. Specify it to do it every hour of every day of every month, etc...

* * * *

3. So your final code is:

30 * * * * php /www/username/directory/file.php > /dev/null

Good Luck!

Peter

[smorb]

Looks good, thank you

[smorb]

I still have a problem with this cron job. I always get the error message ( via e-mail on telnet ) that the permission was denied. I get this mail here :

Message :
php /www/username/myfolder/myfile.php
3 > /dev/null
X-Cron-Env: <SHELL=/bin/sh>
X-Cron-Env: <HOME=/home/username>
X-Cron-Env: <PATH=/usr/bin:/bin>
X-Cron-Env: <LOGNAME=username>

: Permission denied

I don't know what to do, on "Wsftp" the settings for the folder look like this
Owner ( Read -ok / Write -ok / Execute -ok)
Group ( Read -ok/ write -ok / Execute -ok)
Other ( Read -ok/ write -ok / Execute -ok)

and I checked the file itself, it works without problems testing it on my browser.
Thanx for help, Alex

[Son Nguyen]

Check that command under telnet, see if it works with that path

[smorb]

No, I get the same error, permission denied.

[Son Nguyen]

So are you sure that it's the right path to the file own by you? Or you're trying to run other's file!
To find the right path, go to the directory that has the file, type "pwd".

[smorb]

Yes, it is my own file on my directory on the unix-server.
So the path looks like this :
/home/myusername/www/myfolder/myfile.php
and that is what I used for the cron-job but got the error message "permission denied" all the time.

[Son Nguyen]

Up there, I saw the command you use in cron is:
php /www/username/myfolder/myfile.php

so basically the "/home" is not there.
Double check. There is no reason why it denied running your file.

[smorb]

It get the error message in both cases, doesn't matte if I type:
/home/username/www/myfolder/myfile.php3
or
/username/www/myfolder/myfile.php3

Is there any command for telnet to check if a folder is locked ore not ?

[Son Nguyen]

"ls -a <dirname/filename>"
To run a php script, only need read permission (unlike perl scripts)
So it's something like this: rwx---r-- (704)

[smorb]

Hey, what is this command for? I did it, and now I can not even enter the folder with "wsftp" anymore. I get the same error message now: "Permission denied" for the whole folder.
I did it like you said, but without < and > as I got a syntax error with it. So I did this here:
"ls -a /home/username/www/folder/file.php3" (without "") and got this answer:
/home/username/www/folder/file.php3* (what does "*" mean)
Thanx, alex

[smorb]

Hey, I just found some good tutorials that could help me to solve my problems. There is one for setting up crontabs at
http://www.superscripts.com/tutorial/crontab.htm and another one for all this telnet staff at :
http://www.superscripts.com/tutorial/telnet.html

So I hope I can solve my problem now. Thank you all for helping, Alex

[petesmc]

Hi,

Even though this is an extremely late reply, I know how to use PHP and crontabs but i want to know why am I using:

/dev/null

??

Thanks

[freakysid]

I think that's saying where to send the output.

/dev/null is the null device which is the unix equivelent of the "recycling bin". So its just saying trash the output (rather than sending it to standard out - the shell screen).

[Son Nguyen]

Yes, that's one of the many nice things about Unix system, all devices are considered as files, so you can redirect to your floppy disk, dev/null, whatever.

[qslack]

http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/237/
They're trying to make every single thing a file in a Unix-like system. It's an interesting read.

[Son Nguyen]

Really interesting, I only read part of it but couldn't imagine you would do a cd into a file

[smorb]

Hey, nice to see that you have resuscitated my thread as my problem still is unsolved. Let me tell you the situation again. I have a file (file.php3 / updating a non static html page / see Kevin's tutorial "semi-dynamic-pages"), and want to run it once a hour. Running the file in my browser works fine. My cronjob looks like this:
15 * * * * php3 /home/username/www/folder/file.php3 > /dev/null
I put it in a file called "cron.tab" and started the cronjob with telnet like this: crontab /home/username/www/folder/cron.tab
and get this when I check it with "crontab -l" :

# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE - edit the master and reinstall.
# (/home/úsername/www/folder/cron.tab installed on Sat Apr 14 18:11:58 2001)
# (Cron version -- $Id: crontab.c,v 2.13 1994/01/17 03:20:37 vixie Exp $)
15 * * * * php3 /home/username/www/folder/file.php3 > /dev/null

I think this looks good and should work fine, but actually it is doing nothing, really nothing, I do not even get a error message. Any idea what I could do here?

[nguip]

Wow..

I haven't try the crontab yet.. so I cannt help

Just want to learn more about this so I hope you could teach me how u do this if you had any success