Run Bash From Cron
This might be a bit OT, but I’ve never had to do this before and what I’ve googled doesn’t seem to be working.
I have an ansible playbook that I’m working on that I want to run as a cronjob. One task I’m having trouble with is where I have a text file with lines like:
rd.pl “blah blah”
rd.pl “blah blah blah”
This text file has to be ‘executed’ using ‘bash filename.txt’. (Don’t ask why, I’m working on code that isn’t mine.) When I run the playbook in a console this bit works perfectly. However, when it’s being run from cron, it dies with ‘rd.pl: command not found’. My original thought is that cron’s $PATH is missing the location to this rd.pl file (it’s in
/root/bin), so one suggestion from the Google was to add the path into
/etc/crontab, but I’m still having the same problem. At this stage, I’ve no idea what to try next. Any ideas?
For the record, this was the only option to handle the task I’m having issues with inside cron.
—
Mark Haney Network Engineer at NeoNova
919-460-3330 option 1
mark.haney@neonova.net www.neonova.net
8 thoughts on - Run Bash From Cron
Try adding #!/bin/bash as the first line of the text file and then run it with just the filename.
Mark Haney wrote:
think it is. Try testing it by have your cron job, at the top of the script, issue the env command.
mark
What about just giving the full path to the rd.pl script in the text file (i.e. /root/bin/rd.pl) ?
Noam
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In your crontab, try
env PATH=”$PATH:/root/bin” bash filename.txt
—
Paul Heinlein heinlein@madboa.com
45°38′ N, 122°6′ W
building this playbook, giving the full path didn’t work. (I swear it didn’t). It’s still not great, though because the out put is being generated without the full path. However, I think I can fix that without too much trouble.
—
Mark Haney Network Engineer at NeoNova
919-460-3330 option 1
mark.haney@neonova.net http://www.neonova.net
front of the cron line?
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Mark Haney Network Engineer at NeoNova
919-460-3330 option 1
mark.haney@neonova.net http://www.neonova.net
the text file itself from cron. I’m running an ansible playbook from cron, which, as one of its tasks runs ‘bash filename.txt’. It’s possible I could try the command you recommend above in the task and see if that fixes it.
However, I have another method that works in a similar fashion. I simply added BASH_ENV=$HOME/bash_profile to the top of my crontab, which has fixed the issue. I could have sourced the profile on the cronjob line, but this is a bit clearer for other who might access the system.
—
Mark Haney Network Engineer at NeoNova
919-460-3330 option 1
mark.haney@neonova.net http://www.neonova.net
Mark Haney wrote:
1 1 * * * run_my_script
Ok, I forget if you said it was perl or bash…
more run_my_script
#!/bin/bash
env
Is that clearer?
mark