Crontab Errors

I need to talk it out, so here goes -- clearly, it doesn't understand include.

AND it doesn't understand my lovely comments.

Can a cronjob run a php script?

http://www.webgfxcenter.com/tutorials/tutorials.cfm/155/PHP/

reading this for more information. hopefully someone will be helped by all this chattering.

*yeargh* my php is set up as an apache module, so apparently I need to install lynx to use crontab... !?

How do I tell if wget is usable? That is apparently the other option. Also, the installation instructions for lynx are totally unreadable to me, anyone have a simpler way to explain them? Can I even install lynx if I don't have command line access?

Okay, this is just silly. Rather than install a bunch of things, I think I will rewrite the script in Perl and be done with it.

There are applications that "fake" crontab for php (basically always looking to see if they should have been running a script). I can install Lynx, or convince a sysadmin to activate wget, or convince a sysadmin to make PHP not an Apache module, but CGI instead.

Feel free to interrupt me, eh?

/me mutters something about Perl being better than PHP and goes back to sleep.

Seriously though, if you need a hand rewriting it in Perl let me know. Nearly all servers I've seen have PHP setup as an Apache module -- I honestly didn't know you could have PHP installed stand-alone on your machine to run in your shell.

Yeah, I probably will need help, Wil. It's been a loooooong time since I wrote Perl and I've long since sold my manuals as I moved across the country and they were heavy suckers.

http://www.zerocattle.com/examples/expiredfiles.phps is the php source. Quite frankly, I'm a bit stymied about how to begin, since I've never used Perl with an actual database.

LOL...I don't think I have ever seen anyone post 6 times (talking to themselves) before someone steps in and answers.

I guess that is a disadvantage of knowing more than than most everyone else here huh?

Heh, nah, I was just posting as I was learning. Sometimes I need to explain things to someone else in order to figure things out and there wasn't anyone nearby.

I don't think I gave anyone a chance to comment!

Ok Suaznne, I'll take a look at the source from my office tomorrow. From what you describe, it should be easy enough -- Perl has the same good support for databases through the DBI set of modules as has PHP.

Hey hold up! No need to rewrite when you just need a simple crontab line...

Depending on how your script needs to run... under apache:
58 23 * * * lynx http://example.com/path/to/file.php
58 23 * * * wget http://example.com/path/to/file.php

not under apache:
58 23 * * * /path/to/php -f /path/to/file.php

on my linux box, php is at /usr/local/php/bin/php

If you're script has any output, you can redirect it with "2>/dev/null/" or any other log file "2>my.log".

oh wow, a new option!!

okay, trying that, thanks, Mark!

Quick Question: what's the difference between running it under apache and not running it under apache?

Okay, how do you know where php is?

Edit: nevermind, for my server it's /usr/local/lib/php and I find this by doing the <? php_info() ?> thing, it's the include_path, right?

/bin/sh: /usr/local/lib/php: is a directory

Is the new error, with this:

58 23 * * * /usr/local/lib/php -f /path/to/file/expiredfiles.php

? Ideas?

I think you need to go to the executable PHP directory
Mine is /usr/bin/php
I never was able to get it to work as a standalone executable though.... bleh

That is the directory, not the binary. So try this path:
/usr/local/lib/php/bin/php

I found the location by doing "whereis php". Which returned "/usr/local/php". I new the binary was "bin/php", so I appended that and used "/usr/local/php/bin/php".

Oh, and the difference...

Say you had a script that required environmental variables (apache settings, etc.). Or you needed information from the client's HTTP Request header. Yadda yadda yadda. Or any interaction whatsoever with a user.