How to get CRON to call in the correct PATHs

Question

I'm trying to get cron to call in the correct PATHs. When I run a Python script from shell the script runs fine as it uses the PATHs set in bashrc but when I use cron all the PATHs are not used from bashrc. Is there a file I can enter the PATHs into for cron like bashrc or a way to call the PATHs from bashrc?

Sorry I don't think I worded this correctly, I can get the correct script to run (meaning the PATH to the script in crontab is not the problem here), it's just when that script is running I run a build and this uses the PATHs set in .bashrc. When I run the script when I'm logged in, the .bashrc PATHs are pulled in. Since cron doesn't run in a shell per say it does not pull in .bashrc. Is there a way of pulling this in without having to write a bash script wrapper?

Answer 1

Setting PATH right before the command line in my crontab worked for me:

* * * * * PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin:/path/to/some/thing

Answer 2

I used /etc/crontab. I used vi and entered in the PATHs I needed into this file and ran it as root. The normal crontab overwrites PATHs that you have set up. A good tutorial on how to do this.

The systemwide cron file looks like this:

This has the username field, as used by /etc/crontab.
# /etc/crontab: system-wide crontab
# Unlike any other crontab you don't have to run the `crontab'
# command to install the new version when you edit this file.
# This file also has a username field, that none of the other crontabs do.

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

# m h dom mon dow user   command
42 6 * * *   root    run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily
47 6 * * 7   root    run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly
52 6 1 * *   root    run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly
01 01 * * 1-5 root python /path/to/file.py

Answer 3

Problem

Your script works when you run it from the console but fails in cron.

Cause

Your crontab doesn't have the right path variables (and possibly shell)

Solution

Add your current shell and path the crontab

Script to do it for you

#!/bin/bash
#
# Date: August 22, 2013
# Author: Steve Stonebraker
# File: add_current_shell_and_path_to_crontab.sh
# Description: Add current user's shell and path to crontab
# Source: http://brakertech.com/add-current-path-to-crontab
# Github: hhttps://github.com/ssstonebraker/braker-scripts/blob/master/working-scripts/add_current_shell_and_path_to_crontab.sh

# function that is called when the script exits (cleans up our tmp.cron file)
function finish { [ -e "tmp.cron" ] && rm tmp.cron; }

#whenver the script exits call the function "finish"
trap finish EXIT

########################################
# pretty printing functions
function print_status { echo -e "\x1B[01;34m[*]\x1B[0m $1"; }
function print_good { echo -e "\x1B[01;32m[*]\x1B[0m $1"; }
function print_error { echo -e "\x1B[01;31m[*]\x1B[0m $1"; }
function print_notification { echo -e "\x1B[01;33m[*]\x1B[0m $1"; }
function printline { 
  hr=-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  printf '%s\n' "${hr:0:${COLUMNS:-$(tput cols)}}"
}
####################################
# print message and exit program
function die { print_error "$1"; exit 1; }

####################################
# user must have at least one job in their crontab
function require_gt1_user_crontab_job {
        crontab -l &> /dev/null
        [ $? -ne 0 ] && die "Script requires you have at least one user crontab job!"
}


####################################
# Add current shell and path to user's crontab
function add_shell_path_to_crontab {
    #print info about what's being added
    print_notification "Current SHELL: ${SHELL}"
    print_notification "Current PATH: ${PATH}"

    #Add current shell and path to crontab
    print_status "Adding current SHELL and PATH to crontab \nold crontab:"

    printline; crontab -l; printline

    #keep old comments but start new crontab file
    crontab -l | grep "^#" > tmp.cron

    #Add our current shell and path to the new crontab file
    echo -e "SHELL=${SHELL}\nPATH=${PATH}\n" >> tmp.cron 

    #Add old crontab entries but ignore comments or any shell or path statements
    crontab -l | grep -v "^#" | grep -v "SHELL" | grep -v "PATH" >> tmp.cron

    #load up the new crontab we just created
    crontab tmp.cron

    #Display new crontab
    print_good "New crontab:"
    printline; crontab -l; printline
}

require_gt1_user_crontab_job
add_shell_path_to_crontab

Source

https://github.com/ssstonebraker/braker-scripts/blob/master/working-scripts/add_current_shell_and_path_to_crontab.sh

Sample Output

Answer 4

I know this has been answered already, but I thought that his would be useful to some. I had a similar issue that I recently solved (found here) and here are the highlights of the steps I took to answer this question:

1. make sure that you have the variables you need in PYTHONPATH (found here and here and for more info here) inside the .profile or .bash_profile for any shell you want to test your script in to make sure it works.

2. edit your crontab to include the directories needed to run your script in a cron job (found here and here)

   a) be sure to include the root directory in the PATH variable (.) as explained here (basically if you are running an executable with your command it needs to be able to find root or the directory where the executable is stored) and probably these (/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin)

3. in your crontab file, create a cronjob that will change directory to the directory where you have successfully ran the script before (i.e. Users/user/Documents/foo)

   a) This will look like the following:

   * * * * cd /Users/user/Documents/foo; bar -l doSomething -v 
   

Answer 5

Most likely, cron is running in a very sparse environment. Check the environment variables cron is using by appending a dummy job which dumps env to a file like this:

* * * * * env > env_dump.txt

Compare that with the output of env in a normal shell session.

You can prepend your own environment variables to the local crontab by defining them at the top of your crontab.

Here's a quick fix to prepend $PATH to the current crontab:

# echo PATH=$PATH > tmp.cron
# echo >> tmp.cron
# crontab -l >> tmp.cron
# crontab tmp.cron

The resulting crontab will look similar to chrissygormley's answer, with PATH defined before the crontab rules.

Answer 6

Adding a PATH definition into the user crontab with correct values will help... I've filled mine with just:

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

And it's enough to get all my scripts working... Include any custom path there if you need to.