Using a cron job on this PHP file? Need some help.

[skyraider]

Hey,

I'm running the following command (time: 5 * * * *) as a cron job on index.php under "Advanced" in my cPanel X:

php -q /www/fastarcade/index.php > /www/fastarcade/build.html

Build.html is not being updated every five minutes. In fact, it's not being updated at all. What's wrong?

Thanks.

[Mandibal]

the thing is that you might need the real full path to the script your running and the target file. Right now it looks like your using a path from your user directory but when you run a script from cron with /www it is looking for a www directory at the root of the filesystem not your user directory. That is my guess as to why its not working.

[Nikolas]

I think Mandibal is right. Another thing you can check is the permissions of the user that runs the cron. It must be the Apache user in order to work.

If you want to get rid of this stuff you can create a script that will write the build.html and cron it with curl eg curl http://mysite.com/script.php

[Jump]

You also most likely need the full path to PHP. Such as..

 /usr/bin/php /home/user/site_dir/html/dir/cron_file.php > /dev/null 2>&1 

[HarryR]

You may also have forgotten that '5 * * * *' means to run the script at 5 minutes past every hour, instead of every 5 minutes.

To run every 5 minutes you would use '0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * *'

[ToolboxTech]

Or you could use

*/5 * * * *

to run it every 5 minutes.