Cron not working but auto cron does work.

casolorz

I have setup my cron job like this:

*/5 * * * * www-data /usr/bin/php /var/www/api/cron.php

and I have also tried to run it by hand and I get nothing.

As soon as I turn on auto cron then it emails get fetched so the email settings are fine.

What can I do to troubleshoot this issue? I still haven't found any logs. I am using ubuntu with I believe metalog as my system logger.

Thanks,

--Carlos

peter

Carlos,

Are you sure crond is running?

casolorz

Carlos,
Are you sure crond is running?

I'm pretty sure it is and I see this on the logs

Sep 23 10 pam_unix(cron): session opened for user www-data by (uid=0)

Sep 23 10 (www-data) CMD ( /usr/bin/php /var/www/api/cron.php)

Sep 23 10 pam_unix(cron): session closed for user www-data

Also, shouldn't I be able to run it by hand or is that not how it works? I don't know much about php.

peter

Yes you should be able to run it from command line. e.g "php /var/www/api/cron.php". Without access to the server it's impossible for me to guess the exact problem.

PS. A sure way of checking if crond is running is by issuing 'ps fax | grep cron' from command line.

casolorz

Yes you should be able to run it from command line. e.g "php /var/www/api/cron.php". Without access to the server it's impossible for me to guess the exact problem.
PS. A sure way of checking if crond is running is by issuing 'ps fax | grep cron' from command line.

I do have cron running. Should running it by hand give me any output? is there anything else I can do to troubleshoot this? can I turn on verbose mode or something?

casolorz

Sorry for the bump, I just wanted to make sure there was no way for me to troubleshoot this issue? short of editing the php to make my own logs.

casolorz

So I've started editing the php to see if I can figure it out so far what I know is that the INCLUDE_DIR variable is not set on the mail fetch class php file. I have no idea why because on the cron class file that tried to include the fetch class file the variable is set just fine.

Warning: require_once(INCLUDE_DIRclass.mailparse.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/www/include/class.mailfetch.php on line 18

Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required 'INCLUDE_DIRclass.mailparse.php' (include_path='.:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear') in /var/www/include/class.mailfetch.php on line 18

casolorz

oops I think I jump to conclusions, I was trying to run a different php file.

casolorz

This line doesn't seem to return, not sure if its something I broke or what.

$this->mbox =@imap_open($this->serverstr,$this->username,$this->password);

casolorz

Forgot to put it here, the fix was to add

extension=imap.so

to the php.ini used by cron. The one used by apache already had it.

gojasonw

I'm having the same issue. Could you elaborate on your fix. I'm not sure which php.ini file you are referring to.

casolorz

I'm having the same issue. Could you elaborate on your fix. I'm not sure which php.ini file you are referring to.

On the instructions it says to add a module for php to use imap. Most places tell you to edit the php.ini for apache however I found another php.ini, I think in /etc/php although it was a while ago so I could be wrong. I added it there and that fixed the issue. Essentially php knew how to do imap when running through php but not when running by hand like when it runs from cron.