Run cron job every 5 min

Question

This is my print.py file

#!/usr/bin/env python2.7
from datetime import datetime
fn = 'msgs.txt'                                                                 
f = open(fn, 'aw')
f.write('%s\n' % datetime.now())
f.close()

I want to run this silly script every 5 minutes. I did

sudo crontab -e

and added

*/5 * * * * /home/msh/sandbox/python/cron/run.sh

where run.sh is just

#!/bin/sh
python /home/msh/sandbox/python/cron/print.py 

Files run.sh and print.py have executing permission.

However I don't see the script running because there is no input in msgs.txt. Did I set up cron job correctly?

Solution

You need to give the full path to the target file in your cron script; this is to make sure you know where to check if its being written or not. Try changing fn = 'msg.txt' to fn = '/home/msh/sandbox/python/cron/msg.txt'

This isn't important in your simple example, but you aren't running the script with python2.7, you are running it with python (which may be a different version).

As you have marked the file as executable, your cron task should be simply /home/msh/sandbox/python/cron/print.py.

Comments

[ashim]

Thank you, the problem was in the absolute path.