Question

I have a perl script which Im planning to run every minute.
I have set the cron job as

* * * * * PATH= /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/lib; perl /dm2/www/html/isos/pre5.3/autoDownload.pl 

I assume the script is executing every minute only because I see a entry like below when I do cat cron in /var/log/

Jul 26 04:57:01 dmvbu-build crond[773]: (root) CMD (PATH= /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/lib; perl /dm2/www/html/isos/pre5.3/autoDownload.pl)

Jul 26 04:58:01 dmvbu-build crond[687]: (root) CMD (PATH= /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/lib; perl /dm2/www/html/isos/pre5.3/autoDownload.pl)

But my problem is I have statements like

print LOG "connecting to website\n"

where LOG is a file descriptor to a file named log.txt which is located at
dm2/www/html/isos/pre5.3/ (same place as autoDownload.pl)

But I dont see this log.txt file updating with new informations after I see the entry in the cron log file
But I see this file updating when I run the code manually

Answer 1

The cron line should be

* * * * * PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/lib perl /dm2/www/html/isos/pre5.3/autoDownload.pl

Note the lack of a space after the = and the lack of a semicolon before perl.