Can't run wine using crontab?

Question

My crontab:

* * * * * ~/d2gs.sh

My application:

#!/bin/sh

#
# D2GS
#

# Go to the directory
cd ~

# Run the applications
if ! ps aux | pgrep "D2GS"; then
    wine "C:/D2GS/D2GS.exe" > /dev/null 2>&1 &
fi

The crontab is not starting the process. Which is weird, since I can run ~/d2gs.sh successfully manually.

Answer 1

You have to distinguish between "the crontab is not starting the process" and "the process does start but does not do what it is supposed to". And make sure the file is executable.

In contrast to what I assumed the usage of ~ in crontab is not a problem. The whole command string is passed to a shell.

Answer 2

The cd ~ might not work (since tilde expansion is not universal). Prefer cd $HOME to it (which is guaranteed to do the same for all implementations of /bin/sh ...) ..... Remember that POSIX sh (or /bin/sh) is generally not bash (and your /bin/sh might not be fully POSIX compliant, but more "bourne"-like)!

Of course, you could add something like pwd > /dev/stderr in your script (for debugging purposes).

wine generally needs an X11 server to display windows. And a program started from cron generally don't any X11 server or terminal. So wine is probably failing to start (from your cron job). You might need to set some DISPLAY variable for Xlib. But you might use Xvfb, see here.

At last, pgrep(1) is scanning processes. Either use ps aux | grep "D2GS" or learn how to use pgrep alone.

I recommend using echo something > /dev/stderr or better echo or printf(1) (with a suitable redirection) or logger(1) in your script, at least for debugging purposes (in several places).

And I won't redirect wine-s stderr and stdout to /dev/null at least during the debugging phase. Can't you code (at least temporarily during debugging) wine "C:/D2GS/D2GS.exe" >> /tmp/wine.out 2>&1 and look into /tmp/wine.out with some pager like less ?

Your cron (and your shell script) is not using your interactive PATH variable. You should consider setting it explicitly in your script (or crontab). See environ(7).