Question

I have 2 php scripts which need to run every few minutes, the php itself is fine as I can trigger it manually by typing http://myfakesite.com/myphpfile.php into a browser. Both work as they should.

I don’t have much experience with cron but I have found the crontab file (I am using Parallels Power Panel on a VPN), and it already had jobs to run-parts cron.hourly, daily, weekly and monthly. I added my email address to the MAILTO field, and get a message telling me that cron.hourly is not a directory – even though it is (although it is currently empty).

I also added my own 2 jobs to this file as follows:

*/1 * * * * wget http://myfakesite.com/script1.php
*/5 * * * * wget http://myfakesite.com/script2.php

Neither of these ever get called. In the php script I also have a line to email me once the script is called, so that I know it is working, and have never received an email via the cronjob. If I ssh into the server and use wget the php works and emails me to confirm.

I have also tried

*/1 * * * * php http://myfakesite.com/script1.php

and

*/1 * * * * wget -O /dev/null http://myfakesite.com/script1.php>/dev/null 2>&1

with no luck. The MAILTO in the crontab file never sends me a message to say there was a problem running the script, but clearly it is not doing it.

Can anyone help at all? I have no idea what to try next.

Edit: Found some info that said that the ‘not a directory’ error can be down to a corrupt crontab file. So I downloaded it copied the info to a new file and uploaded that. The ‘not a directory’ error disappeared…COMPLETELY. Even if I tell it to look for a folder which I know doesn’t exist like cron.myfakefolder I don’t get a Not a directory: /etc/cron.myfakefolder email. Replaced my new crontab file with the original, and I’m still not getting any feedback from the cronjob.

Edit 2: As dAm2K and prodigitalson suggested, I tried using the absolute paths to both wget and php. Neither have worked, and I’ve double checked the locations of usr/bin/wget and usr/bin/php just to make sure they were actually there.
I also checked var/log/cron and var/log/messages, both contained this:

2002Can’t perform “download” operation: Requested file “/var/log/cron” is to big to be sent at once. Try to request file in pieces of 512KB

No idea what is happening with this. As I mentioned in edit 1, I’m also no longer receiving error emails even when I purposely add a false location. Is this related to the error in the log files?

Also, I have checked that crond is running and according to both ‘System Services’ and ‘System Processes’ it is running.

Answer 1

Try using absolute paths to executables with cron: eg

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/wget 'http://myfakesite.com/script1.php'

instead of

*/5 * * * * wget http://myfakesite.com/script1.php

Double check /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog log files for details on cron execution, and what happens to the system in general.