Cron Job - Could not open input file:

Question

I have set up a php file to run that just echos hello.

<?php
echo hello;
?>

My cron job looks like this:

/usr/local/bin/php -f “/home/username/public_html/mls/test.php”

when my script runs i get a confirmation email that says:

Could not open input file: /home/username/public_html/mls/test.php 

I don't know what is causing this. I am using godaddy's virtual private server with cpanel x installed. I have used the ssh to set permissions 777 on folder and file and still can not get it to run.

Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.

Solution

For some reason PHP cannot open the file. Try replacing /usr/local/bin/php -f with "ls -la" to try to crib some more information. Remember to NOT quote the file name in the crontab: php -f filename.php, not php -f "filename.php", unless it contains spaces -- and then it's better to use single quotes.

Possibly, try "ls -la /home", "ls -la /home/username", "ls -la ~/public_html" and so on.

Also try appending

2>&1

to the command line, in case only stdout is mailed to you (I don't really think so, but being sure costs little).

One other possibility

The crontab as it is refers /home/username/public_html/mls/test.php - that is, a public HTML directory inside username's commonest value for a home directory.

It is possible that the cron job is either not running with the appropriate user and privileges, or that the user it "sees" is actually a virtual user - there is no "/home/username" at all - and the "home directory" is elsewhere, possibly even existing just as long as the cron job runs. In this case the solution might be to refer to

~/public_html/mls/test.php

or, as described above, to first run a command such as pwd or ls -la to determine exactly where the cron job's current working directory is.

If this, too, fails, then another workaround could be to invoke the PHP HTTP handler via curl or lynx:

/usr/bin/curl http://www.thishostname.com/mls/test.php

Possibly using either some environment variable or curl header or _GET option to authenticate to the script as the cron job, and avoid it being accessible from the outside.

Comments

[user982853]

Thanks, i just needed to remove the "" around the url path. Now it works fine. Thank you.

[c.k]

First time to set up my cron job using GoDaddy Cpanel and /usr/bin/curl worked out! Thanks!