UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi, I am trying to use a PHP script as a test for a cron job.

My crontab is 1 line:

30 * * * * /home/www/inc/crontab.php

if I test the file through the browser (ie. http://www.domain.com/inc/crontab.php), the PHP script works -- so there is nothing wrong with the PHP script itself or the path.

I aked my hosting admin for assistance and the error he keeps getting is:

/bin/sh: line 1: /home/www/inc/crontab.php: Permission denied

What permission do I need to set to get it to work???

What about this (adjust path to php executable below)?

30 * * * * /usr/bin/php /home/www/inc/crontab.php

Note that your host may not necessarily have the php executable installed if it is just meant to run as a module to Apache. Only you (or your host admin) will know how the PHP is configured. In that case, you will not be able to run PHP scripts on the command line.

By the way the following works for me:

a.php:

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php phpinfo() ?>

chmod +x a.php
./a.php

So you probably may do it too.

what does:



chmod +x a.php
./a.php



do?

Make the script executable on a Unix system, and then execute it on the command line.

30 * * * * wget -O /dev/null http://www.domain.com/inc/crontab.php

could always try something like this...

The OP said "Hi, I am trying to use a PHP script as a test for a cron job.", not accessing a PHP script (or other URLs via HTTP(S)) on a remote server in a cron job.

They are totally different things. Usually, what a cron job does is not something that should be accessible on the public Internet. If someone use your scheme to run a cron job with a http://localhost/... URL, that means the script is there for everyone on the Internet to execute (provided he/she knows the URL), no matter you like it or not.