Invalid crontab

software development
#1

Hi, i just tried to setup my first cronjob and I failed miserably.
My Goal: To run a php script every 30 minutes.
My attempt was as folows.

  1. vi foo
    MAILTO: myemailaddress
    */30 * * * * php /home/myusername/mydomain.com/script.php

install cron

  1. crontab foo

Now I get an email stating this.

I used this cron on my previous shared server without a problem. I also tried running it as a shell script whatever by putting #!/usr/local/bin/php -q on top of my php script, chmodding it to 755 and then just doing */30 * * * * /fullpath/script.php, but that doesn’t work either.

2 questions.

  1. How can I get this working?
  2. If i didn’t put MAILTO on the cron, what email does the system to use and how do I change or modify that?

Oh, and running php script.php from the shell runs perfect…Must have something to do with this server clustering which confuses the hell out of me.

#2

Make sure you have a blank line after the crontab line in your text file foo. I.E. Press return twice.

You may want to try the full path for php
/usr/local/bin/php

–
Norm

#3

Excellent, that was it. Thanks norm.

Do you happen to know the answer to my other question? About where I can find and modify my email address for my *nix user account?

#4

I am not too sure what you mean here. But if you mean the username that you use to login, for example with ssh, to the account then that is fixed.

–
Norm

#5

If you don’t specify a mailto address, messages will be sent to that user’s maildir. So, if you set up an E-mail address in conjunction with the user (through the panel) who’s got the cronjobs then you’ll recieve the messages normally. If there’s no E-mail address set up with the user, it will still be delivered to the maildir, you’ll just have to use SSH to access it.

I think that you can specify any dreamhost address as the mailto address as well…

-Matttail

#6

I’m having the exact same problem and (what with me being very new to shell commands) I have no idea what it means to use the full path… /usr/local/bin/php

My crontab currently looks like:

*/30 * * * * php /home/username/userdomain/folder/script.php

Does this mean that it should look like this?

*/30 * * * * php /username/local/bin/php/script.php

#7

Instead of:-

*/30 * * * * php /home/username/userdomain/folder/script.php

try

*/30 * * * * /usr/local/bin/php /home/username/userdomain/folder/script.php

(all on one line with at least one space between /usr/local/bin/php and /home/username/userdomain/folder/script.php)

php is the ‘executable’ part and cron needs to know that it is in the folder /usr/local/bin/ which is the ‘path’.

So when a program asks for the full path it means to add the exact route to the location of the program or script on a particular computer.

–
Norm