Cron Jobs Not Executing - Manual Commands Working

Question

I've been scanning forums for days/weeks now on this issue, but I have a raspberry pi that I'm trying to setup a cleaning script on. The script works well manually, but not via cron (cron shows the job running, but nothing in errors).

The cron entry (and execution) is:

Jul  8 07:02:01 E1 CRON[16785]: (root) CMD (/usr/bin/php /extHDD/subdir/subdir/subdir/cleanbackups.php >>/extHDD/subdir/subdir/subdir/cleanbackups.log 2>&1)

The "cleanbackups.log" only shows blank lines when the script runs.

The script is designed like this (set to expire older than 2 days and 1hr):

cat cleanbackups.php
#!/bin/bash
export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin:/extHDD/subdir/subdir/subdir

<?php
    $files = glob("backup-*_xyz.tar.gz");
    foreach($files as $file) {
        if(is_file($file)
        && time() - filemtime($file) >= 2*1*0*0) { // 7 days
            unlink($file);
        }
    }
?>

The script runs with:

- php cleanbackups.php
- php -f cleanbackups.php
- php -q cleanbackups.php
- /usr/bin/php cleanbackups.php
- /usr/bin/php -f cleanbackups.php
- /usr/bin/php -q cleanbackups.php

This cron job is being modified on the root account, but using a standard user doesn't change the result.

Also, I already used chmod +X /path/to/cleanbackups.php, with no change.

Can anyone assist me in this? It's causing me severe anxiety :)

Answer 1

A couple of things:

1. put some echo lines in your script so you see the command you are trying to run, and the value of any variables when cron runs.

2. How about this as an alternative:

   # edit root's crontab, not the pi user's
   sudo crontab -e
   # insert the following line, then save 
   0 18  * * *  find /extHDD/subdir/subdir/subdir/backup-*_xyz.tar.gz -mtime +2 -exec rm {} \; 
   # con then runs the command every day at 18:00 
   # the command deletes files named 
   # /extHDD/subdir/subdir/subdir/backup-*_xyz.tar.gz 
   # that are more than two days old 
   # if 2 days and 1 hour is important, then look at -mmin
   

Answer 2

My solution is more of a way to troubleshoot. Try to run your scripts in a cron-like environment.

The answer in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2135478/how-to-simulate-the-environment-cron-executes-a-script-with will explain how to get a clean environment to test your scripts with.