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Imagine a script is running in these 2 sets of "conditions":
- live action, set up in
sudo crontab
- debug, when I run it from console
./my-script.py
What I'd like to achieve is an automatic detection of "debug mode", without me specifying an argument (e.g. --debug
) for the script.
Is there a convention about how to do this? Is there a variable that can tell me who the script owner is? Whether script has a console at stdout
? Run a ps | grep
to determine that?
Thank you for your time.
Since sys.stdin
will be a TTY in debug mode, you can use the os.isatty() function:
import sys, os
if os.isatty(sys.stdin.fileno()):
# Debug mode.
pass
else:
# Cron mode.
pass
You could add an environment variable to the crontab line and check, inside your python application, if the environment variable is set.
crontab's configuration file:
CRONTAB=true
# run five minutes after midnight, every day
5 0 * * * /path/to/your/pythonscript
Python code:
import os
if os.getenv('CRONTAB') == 'true':
# do your crontab things
else:
# do your debug things
Use a command line option that only cron will use.
Or a symlink to give the script a different name when called by cron. You can then use sys.argv[0]
to distinguish between the two ways to call the script.