Cron job not executing script properly

AdamF

I have 3 scripts that I want to run at different times. Logged in as root, I setup a cronjob with:

crontab -e

The contents of the crontab file is:

0 7 * * 6 /opt/scripts/script_1.sh >/dev/null 2>&1
0 0 * * * /opt/scripts/script_2.sh >/dev/null 2>&1
0 6 * * * /opt/scripts/script_3.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

Permissions on all script files are:

-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root

Each script runs when running it manually.

The scripts are not running. On another system, I run only script 1 via cron, and it works perfectly. However on this server, the only difference (at least with the crontab file) is that I have multiple entries.

Is there anything obvious that anyone sees that could be an issue?

triple9

Do you have #!/bin/bash in the scripts? Other thing that could cause problem is missing PATH variable. Put something like

#!/bin/bash
export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

In script itself.

AdamF

@triple9 said in Cron job not executing script properly:

Do you have #!/bin/bash in the scripts? Other thing that could cause problem is missing PATH variable. Put something like
#!/bin/bash
export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
In script itself.

Yes, I have #!/bin/bash in each script. I will put in:

export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

and see what happens. Thanks

AdamF

@triple9 said in Cron job not executing script properly:

Do you have #!/bin/bash in the scripts? Other thing that could cause problem is missing PATH variable. Put something like
#!/bin/bash
export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
In script itself.

Well that did the trick. Thanks!

triple9

You're welcome.

travisdh1

@triple9 Good job getting @fuznutz04 sorted.

Cron runs in it's own user-space. Which has very little already defined.... like PATH.

If a script runs fine when run manually but fails in cron, it's almost always a missing environment variable (PATH being the most common.)

AdamF

@travisdh1 said in Cron job not executing script properly:

@triple9 Good job getting @fuznutz04 sorted.

Cron runs in it's own user-space. Which has very little already defined.... like PATH.

If a script runs fine when run manually but fails in cron, it's almost always a missing environment variable (PATH being the most common.)

Well that's great to know. So is it safe to assume for every script that I want to run with cron, should have this defined in each script?

#!/bin/bash
export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

travisdh1

@fuznutz04 said in Cron job not executing script properly:

@travisdh1 said in Cron job not executing script properly:

@triple9 Good job getting @fuznutz04 sorted.

Cron runs in it's own user-space. Which has very little already defined.... like PATH.

If a script runs fine when run manually but fails in cron, it's almost always a missing environment variable (PATH being the most common.)

Well that's great to know. So is it safe to assume for every script that I want to run with cron, should have this defined in each script?
#!/bin/bash
export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

It's very likely, yes.

AdamF

@travisdh1 Ok, thanks for the explanation.