Verified:

Sudo crontab -e and i see the job configured

/etc/cron.d/itflow and i see the job with cronkey

"systemctl status cron" shows active

If i manually run for the mail queue it works.

Suggestions on what to check?

  • It looks like i may have gotten it working

    It looks like the cron environment outside of shell is limited and the cron job isn't able to find the path needed. I modified it to this line in the cron file and it seems to be working now.This ensures that the cron job has access to the necessary system paths.

    "* * * * * www-data PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin /usr/bin/php /var/www/portal.helixsolutions.co/scripts/cron_mail_queue.php"

    For others that may experience this issue, I added "PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"

You don't need the cron key anymore.

You can add the following to the end of the cron job to add logging

2>&1 | logger -t itflow-cron

Then tail the syslog to see the error its generating

    Sudo crontab -e and i see the job configured

    -

    /etc/cron.d/itflow and i see the job with cronkey

    Have your cron job in one, or the other. Don't have it in both. I'd suggest /etc/cron.d/itflow myself.

    Remove the cronkey, we don't use that anymore.

    Take away the sudo -u, you just need the time, name of the user and the command to run, e.g.:
    0 2 * * * www-data /usr/bin/php /var/www/itflow.example.com/scripts/cron.php

    Is the nightly cron job running?

    Add the following to the ned of the mail queue job: 2>&1 | logger -t itflow-mailqueue and then grep your syslog for itflow-mailqueue

      wrongecho Have your cron job in one, or the other. Don't have it in both. I'd suggest /etc/cron.d/itflow myself.

      Ended up leaving it under the "ETC" directory, everything else has been corrected but I'm not showing the CRON job running on a nightly basis. The app log does not show any history of it running.

          Can you post a screenshot of your updated configuration? Ideally of the entire line like you did in the second screenshot of winscp

            MistahJ_94 then maybe you try changing it over to sudo crontab -e and see what happens?

              wrongecho Can you post a screenshot of your updated configuration? Ideally of the entire line like you did in the second screenshot of winscp

              Here you go

              Also on a side note,

              Checking /var/mail/www-data

              the last log event i see is from March 11th, nothing after that, i am assuming something has happened and cron is no longer working automatically.

              If i run either command
              "sudo -u www-data php /var/www/portal.helixsolutions.co/scripts/cron.php"

              or

              "sudo -u www-data php /var/www/portal.helixsolutions.co/scripts/cron_mail_queue.php"

              The jobs complete just fine, so im scratching my head, perhaps maybe switch the cron user to root?

                I have performed additional troubleshooting steps. Here is what has changed.

                Most up to date Cron file configuration:

                I've made a test output for Cron

                I have verified file using the following commands

                • "ls -l /etc/cron.d/" (Made sure the file did not have any dots or extensions)

                • "cat /etc/cron.d/itflow" (Made sure this was part of it

                  "* * * * * www-data /usr/bin/php /var/www/portal.helixsolutions.co/scripts/cron_mail_queue.php >> /var/log/itflow_parser.log 2>&1)

                • "ls -l /etc/cron.d/itflow" (Verified permissions and ownership to verify it had a similar output to this "-rw-r--r-- 1 root root ...")

                • "echo >> /etc/cron.d/itflow" (Made sure it ended with a newline)

                • "systemctl restart cron" (Restarted Cron)

                • "journalctl -u cron -f" (Watched Cron live)

                • "sudo -u www-data /usr/bin/php /var/www/portal.helixsolutions.co/scripts/cron_mail_queue.php" (Ran PHP script manually and it's functional)

                So you're now sending output to /var/log/itflow_parser.log? What does that file say?

                  wrongecho

                  there was a typo its not going to "itflow_parser.log" its going to "itflow_mailqueue.log"

                  The file is created but log is empty

                      MistahJ_94

                      Okay, so lets just change it back to 2>&1 | logger -t itflow and use journalctl -f --all to see what's going on?

                        It looks like i may have gotten it working

                        It looks like the cron environment outside of shell is limited and the cron job isn't able to find the path needed. I modified it to this line in the cron file and it seems to be working now.This ensures that the cron job has access to the necessary system paths.

                        "* * * * * www-data PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin /usr/bin/php /var/www/portal.helixsolutions.co/scripts/cron_mail_queue.php"

                        For others that may experience this issue, I added "PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"