executing a sh script from the cron

Question

I have a test.sh script

#!/bin/sh
php /home/v/file.php
sh /root/x/some.sh

when I execute the file as root from command line it works.

sh /home/v/test.sh 

when I set it to crontab -e (is the root cron), is not working

 * * * * * sh /home/v/test.sh

What do I do wrong? Thanks

Answer 1

According to the man:

The cron daemon starts a subshell from your HOME directory. If you schedule a command to run when you are not logged in and you want commands in your .profile file to run, the command must explicitly read your .profile file.

The cron daemon supplies a default environment for every shell, defining HOME, LOGNAME, SHELL (=/usr/bin/sh),
and PATH (=/usr/bin).

So cron daemon doesn't know where php is and you should specify the full php path by hand, for example (I don't know your real PHP path):

#!/bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/php /home/v/file.php
sh /root/x/some.sh

Another way is to source the /etc/profile (or your .profile/.bashrc), for example

* * * * * . /home/v/.bashrc ; sh /home/v/test.sh

This is useful if your .bashrc set the environment variables that you need (i.e. PATH)

EDIT

An interesting reading is "Newbie: Intro to cron", don't undervalue the article from the title (It's a reading for everybody), in fact it's well written complete and answer perfectly to your question:

...
PATH contains the directories which will be in the search path for cron e.g if you've got a program 'foo' in the directory /usr/cog/bin, it might be worth adding /usr/cog/bin to the path, as it will stop you having to use the full path to 'foo' every time you want to call it.
...

Answer 2

There are four common causes for commands working when typed in a terminal but not from cron, in order of commonness:

1. Cron provides a limited environment, e.g., a minimal $PATH, and other expected variables missing.
2. Cron invokes /bin/sh by default, whereas you may be using some other shell interactively.
3. Cron treats the % character specially (it is turned into a newline in the command).
4. Cron doesn't provide a terminal or graphical environment.

If your job produces any output, including error messages, cron sends you an email with the whole output. Make sure you read the mail you receive locally or forward it to an address you read. To forward mail from a local account to some other address, put the other address in ~/.forward. If the cron job is running as a system user (root, webmaster, …), make sure that user's mail is redirected to you (and any other admin); with most mail setups, put lines like root: elzo in /etc/aliases.

Answer 3

The cron daemon usually executes your command in a shell where the PATH environment variable is restricted to some system default, e.g. /usr/bin:/bin.

Probably, your php command is not available in /usr/bin or /bin and thus the script fails when executed via cron and runs successful when not.

Cron usually reports errors or job messages via a mail to the root user (i.e. when a command returns an exit status != 0 or produces output to stdout/stderr) after the job is finished.

Depending on your system you have to setup local mail delivery to get these messages.