Need help setting up cron. Script works fine in ssh

Question

So I THINK the prob is most likely path. But I am confused on how to correctly set this.

So the top of my script looks like:

#!/bin/sh


MYSQL="$(which mysql)"
if [ -z "$MYSQL" ]; then
    echo "Error: MYSQL not found"
    exit 1
fi

when I run the script in ssh, it works prefect! But when I setup the cron, using these commands in directadmin:

/home/username/script.sh

also tried:

/bin/sh /home/username/script.sh

Both of them give me the following error:

Error: MYSQL not found

So here is what I found online:

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/etc:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin 
HOME=/var/log

I assume I need to add at least one of the above statements in my script. The server is a freebsd server and I assume everything is in the default location. I know when I do a whereis sh it returns /bin/sh

I have no idea how to check PATH or home. I'm new to freebsd so any help would be great.

BellevueBob · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-17 17:56:49Z

1

Crontab jobs are submitted by the system and do not execute the normal system startup script (which sets PATH and similar things).

I do all my work in Korn shell on Solaris and add lines similar to these at the beginning of all my scripts:

#!/bin/ksh
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# /opt/app/batch/daily_dns.ksh  Daily DNS Batch process via crontab
# 16 3 * * * /opt/app/batch/dns/bin/daily_dns.ksh > /opt/app/batch/daily_dns.log
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
. /etc/profile

You probably need to do something similar.

answered Feb 17, 2013 at 17:56

BellevueBob

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Srdjan Grubor · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-17 17:56:09Z

0

I'm only making an educated guess as I'm only familiar with Debian, but cron runs tasks as root and runs them non-interactively. This means that it gets the same path as your root user and usually non-interactive prompts exit from .bash_profile before paths are set.

TL;DR: Check that your root user has MYSQL variable and check that root user's .bash_profile does not exit on non-interactive prompts.

answered Feb 17, 2013 at 17:56

Srdjan Grubor

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loreb · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-18 16:12:54Z

0

You can read the env(1) manpage and use it both to diagnose & fix your problem, or just fix the environment from within the script if you prefer.

As you mentioned it's a freebsd server, my guess is that you have mysql installed under /usr/local - which isn't included in cron's default $PATH.

answered Feb 18, 2013 at 16:12

loreb

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Jenson Jose · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-21 07:27:26Z

0

This is because of PATH issues. You can either specify path variables within your crontab file as per above answers, or modify your script.

In case you decide to decide on the latter, here's what's needed to be modified,

On your standard terminal, run "which which" to find out the exact path of the "which" tool on your system (usually "/usr/bin/which")
Replace the command "which" in your script with its full path.

Now you can cron the script using - "/bin/sh /path/to/your/script", in the crontab. You do not need to add any extra path variables in the crontab file in this case.

Hope this helps.

answered May 21, 2013 at 7:27

Jenson Jose

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