Question

I’ve some PHP scripts doing some work for me and printing some logging informations. This is the structure of calling:

Crontab

*/3 *  *   *   *     sleep 180 && cd /var/www/tasks && ./wrapper.sh start "/usr/bin/php stat-import.php" stat-import >> stat-import.log

wrapper.sh

#!/bin/bash

function start
{
    WRAP_CMD="$1"
    WRAP_DESC="$2"
    ARGS=($WRAP_CMD)
    if [[ ( $WRAP_DESC ) && ( -n $WRAP_DESC ) ]]
    then
        OUT_DESC="$WRAP_DESC"
    else
        OUT_DESC="$WRAP_CMD"
    fi
    PID=`ps axw -o pid,command | grep "$WRAP_CMD" | grep -v grep | grep -v "$0" | awk '{print $1}' | awk '{print $1}'`
    if [[ ( $PID ) && ( -n $PID ) ]]
    then
        echo `date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'`" INFO - $OUT_DESC already running"
    else
        echo `date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'`" INFO - $OUT_DESC started"
        $WRAP_CMD
        ECODE=$?
        echo `date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'`" INFO - $OUT_DESC finished"
        exit $ECODE
    fi
}

function stop
{
    [...]
}

function main
{
    if [[ ( $# < 2 ) || ( $# > 3 ) ]]
    then
        echo "Usage: $0 [start|stop] COMMAND [DESCRIPTION]"
        exit 0
    fi
    if [ $1 == "start" ]
    then
        start "$2" "$3"
    elif [ $1 == "stop" ]
    then
        stop "$2" "$3"
    else
        echo "Usage: $0 [start|stop] COMMAND [DESCRIPTION]"
    fi
    exit 0
}

# Script execution:
main "$@"

stat-import.php

<?php
    die("error message");
    // OR
    exit(127);
    // OR
    trigger_error("error_message", E_USER_ERROR);

By default only syntax errors in wrapper.sh or in my PHP script result in a mail by CRON. My user defined errors in stat-import.php aren’t passed to CRON but go into log file? Huh?

Answer 1

By default, PHP errors are printed to stdout, which your cron is redirecting to the log file. You need to print your errors to stderr instead, so they will be mailed by the cron daemon: display_errors setting in PHP docs