Cron job

Manuel Godinez

Thanks Brad and Luciano and Don,

Guess going to have to learn another language

Brad Buskey

Nope, I just tried creating a .php with a simple command to call a shell script, and the ASH shell could not "run" the php file. It is not a shell executable scripting language, it needs a web interpreter in order to run, and has to be run from a browser.

You will want to convert whatever the PHP page is doing into a script language the shell can process.

Manuel Godinez

I was looking at the docs and they do mention the php-cli to be able to run from the command line but it works when I doit manually, but again, when using the cron it doesn't. So you think SH or Python would be easier for a PHP guy to grasp the basics?

Brad Buskey

@Manuel-Godinez What does crontab -l return when you run it on the command line? I dont think your crontab is set up right.

Manuel Godinez

It does return the exact cron job:

5 13 * * * /www/php/test.php > /tmp/test.log

Manuel Godinez

Ok. I am now trying Python to run the cron script. I have done the following steps:

1 - Upgraded to latest firmware b157
2 - opkg update
3 - opkg install python
4 - opkg install python-light pyOnionGpio
5 - did a reboot
6 - got the following code into a filename called test2.py in the root folder :

import time
import onionGpio

gpioNum = 18
gpioObj = onionGpio.OnionGpio(gpioNum)

set to output

status = gpioObj.setOutputDirection(0)

alternate the value

loop = 1
value = 0
while loop == 1:
# reverse the value
if value == 0:
value = 1
else:
value = 0

# set the new value
status  = gpioObj.setValue(value)
print 'GPIO%d set to: %d'%(gpioNum, value)

time.sleep(5)

7 - chmod the test2.py to make it executable. 0744
8 - Now I go to the crontab -e and inserted the following line:

12 6 * * * /test2.py > /tmp/test.log 2>&1

9 - restarted cron
10- waiting to execute
11 - got this at test.log :

/test2.py: line 1: import: not found
/test2.py: line 2: import: not found
/test2.py: line 4: gpioNum: not found
/test2.py: line 5: syntax error: unexpected "("

So I am guessing for some reason, it didn't find the import file onionGpio.py but I checked already and it is in the location it is suppose to be which is /usr/lib/python2.7/

I am wondering if I missed a step?

Thanks again for all your help

Costas Costas

@Manuel-Godinez

In the cron aren't you missing the python call?
So change to something like this, depending where test2.py is located

12 6 * * * python /test2.py > /tmp/test.log 2>&1

Manuel Godinez

Thank you Costas!! That was it. That should be it now. And thanks everyone else too for their help.

CoffeeCat

@Costas-Costas Thank for the help with Cron! Left out the python call too in my cron scrip.

CoffeeCat

@Brad-Buskey Thanks for the detailed help with Cron. Tried for hours, if not days, to try to get it setup in my Omega2+.