Cron just not working?

[copes]

Hello,

I've got several cron jobs setup in crontab, however none of them run as far as i can see. I've been working with the hosts of my dedicated server, but there proving less than useful in solving the problem.

My question is this: is there a cron job that i can setup, which will do something on the server, or email me etc without the need for external files?

(all of my cron jobs are to run php files, which my host belives all have errors.)

So i would like to be able to see if cron is actually working. (also is there a way to view cron's log? if it has one, to see if there are errors?)

my crontab looks like this:

MAILTO=myemail@mydomain.com
*/15 * * * * /usr/bin/php -q /home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/tools/pingclient/cron.php > /dev/null
08 * * * * /usr/bin/php -q /home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php > /dev/null

(removed my email address)

Or can anyone see a problem with my cron jobs?

I hope someone can help, this has been going on for far too long!

[matonb]

Hi copes,

cron will log activity to /var/log/cron

You could also add an entry that will simply
echo "something" > to_a_file_of_your_choice

To see if it's working....

[copes]

i've setup a cronjob to run:

*/05 * * * * echo "testing cron" > /home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/crontest.txt

i also ran the command:

echo "testing cron" > /home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/crontestmanual.txt

which worked, when i run the commands i want to work without cron, they don't work either.

e.g:

*/15 * * * * /usr/bin/php -q /home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php > /dev/null

which doesn't work?

here is the code from the cron.php:

 <?
 
$to = 'blankedout@forsecurity.com';
$subject = 'Test Email';
$message = '<b>Test</b>';
 
$headers = "From: Test <blankedout@forsecurity.com>\n"; $headers .= "X-Sender: <blankedout@forsecurity.com>\n"; $headers .= "Return-Path: <blankedout@forsecurity.com>\n"; $headers .= "X-Mailer: PHP\n"; $headers .= "X-Priority: 5\n"; $headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\n"; $headers .=
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n";
 
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
 
?>  

Which when i browse to in my browser, works perfectly. I can only guess that the problem im having is something relating to getting the php to run.

when i try just running /home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php i get a whole list of errors in the console.

[matonb]

What sort of messages are you getting ?

[copes]

root@ds4637:~# /home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 1: ?: No such file or directory
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 3: =: command not found
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 4: =: command not found
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 5: =: command not found
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 7: =: command not found
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 7: .=: command not found
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 7: .=: command not found
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 7: .=: command not found
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 7: .=: command not found
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 7: .=: command not found
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 7: .=: command not found
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 8: MIME-Version: 1.0\n: command not found
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 10: syntax error near unexpected token `$to,'
/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php: line 10: `mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);'

[matonb]

You need to tell it it's php I haven't used command line php for a while but I think the standard #! will work i.e.

#!/usr/bin/php

at the beginning of your .php files

[copes]

In the actual php files themselves?

[matonb]

Yes then you can just call the script, otherwise they should work if you call it through php

#/usr/bin/php my_script.php

[copes]

Hello,

I've added:

#!/usr/bin/php

as the first line in the cron.php

and now when i run:

/home/a/c/acornmedia/public_html/cron.php

in the command line, i don't get any errors. however i don't receive any mail from the script either. Could there be something else wrong?

[matonb]

Do you have access to /var/log ?