trouble getting crontabs to work

[bphillips2]

I am attempting to get some crontabs to work. I installed zurmo (zurmo.org) on a test server with Ubuntu 12.04 and had everything working, even the crontabs. I then reinstalled Zurmo on a different ubunut server and can no longer get them to work. I copied and pasted them from the original server and then just changed the username.

I originally followed this guide
http://zurmo.org/wiki/how-to-set-up-job-manager

After having a bunch of problems I simplified it and tried just one of the Zurmo commands, I then added a test cron job to see how it would work, as you can see below.

current settings using "crontab -e" - none of these work

# Edit this file to introduce tasks to be run by cron.
#
# Each task to run has to be defined through a single line
# indicating with different fields when the task will be run
# and what command to run for the task
#
# To define the time you can provide concrete values for
# minute (m), hour (h), day of month (dom), month (mon),
# and day of week (dow) or use '*' in these fields (for 'any').#
# Notice that tasks will be started based on the cron's system
# daemon's notion of time and timezones.
#
# Output of the crontab jobs (including errors) is sent through
# email to the user the crontab file belongs to (unless redirected).
#
# For example, you can run a backup of all your user accounts
# at 5 a.m every week with:
# 0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/
#
# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)
#
# m h  dom mon dow   command
 
 
*/1 * * * * cd /home/justin/zurmo/app/protected/commands && ./zurmoc jobManager super Monitor &> /dev/null
*/1 * * * * echo "Cron Worked2 $(date)" >> cd /home/justin/zurmo/app/protected/commands/cronworked.txt

I had originally added a test line like this

*/1 * * * * echo "Cron Worked2 $(date)" >>  /tmp/cronworked.txt

That code worked, it created the "cronworked.txt" file and placed the echo command in it.

So my thought is somehow the cron job isn't working within the user (justin) account.

I have done a chomd 777 on /home/justin/zurmo/app/protected/commands

Anyone have any ideas? I'm running out of options.

[tgalati4]

Cronjobs are either owned by root or by individual users. Normally you would use crontab -e to edit a cron table for the current user. That sets up both the job and the permissions to run the job. This prevents moving the job to a different user--perhaps as a security measure.

man crontab

Pay attention to /etc/cron.allow and /etc/cron.deny.

[bphillips2]

Appreciate the reply.

I don't have a /etc/cron.allow or /etc/cron.deny

I think the user justin has permission to run cron jobs, because the first test I did:

*/1 * * * * echo "Cron Worked2 $(date)" >>  /tmp/cronworked.txt

Was done using the user "justin". In fact it was in the same cron entry just under my Zurmo cron entry. So it's like I can run crons that affect root directories but not the user directories.

If it helps, here are my permissions:

justin@ubuntu:~/zurmo/app/protected/commands$ ls -l
total 108
-rw-r--r-- 1 justin justin  3145 Oct 31 23:02 bootstrap.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 justin justin 12051 Oct 31 23:02 DatabaseCommand.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 justin justin  9949 Oct 31 23:02 EmailCommand.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 justin justin  4113 Oct 31 23:02 ImportCommand.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 justin justin  5068 Oct 31 23:02 InstallCommand.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 justin justin  7959 Oct 31 23:02 InstallLanguageCommand.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 justin justin  4851 Oct 31 23:02 JobManagerCommand.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 justin justin  6751 Oct 31 23:02 ManageMetadataCommand.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 justin justin  2256 Oct 31 23:02 roots.php
drwxr-xr-x 3 justin justin  4096 Oct 31 23:02 tests
-rw-r--r-- 1 justin justin  5187 Oct 31 23:02 UpdateSchemaCommand.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 justin justin  8069 Oct 31 23:02 UpgradeZurmoCommand.php
-rwxr-xr-x 1 justin justin    73 Oct 31 23:02 zurmoc
-rwxr-xr-x 1 justin justin   380 Oct 31 23:02 zurmoc.bat
-rwxr-xr-x 1 justin justin  2193 Oct 31 23:02 zurmoc.php
-rw-r--r-- 1 justin justin  2267 Oct 31 23:02 zurmocTest.php

[tgalati4]

I'm not familiar with zurmo, but I am familar with http://sugarcrm.org which is also a php-based CRM. Normally those php files would have root ownership or www-data ownership, since they run under the apache web server. I'm not sure if the ownership by a single user would create an execution problem, but if justin does not have admin privileges, there is a good chance that is the issue.

You can try adding justin to /etc/cron.allow or do some more research in how the ownerships are supposed to be set up. I remember having similar problems getting sugarcrm cronjobs to run properly, but that was a few years ago and I would have to go through my notes to see what hoops I had to jump through to get them to work. Have you searched through the zurmo forums for cronjob?

[bphillips2]

Yes, I have looked through the zurmo forums, they haven't been much help.

Is there a way to see if justin has admin privileges? Or if I give him admin privileges to test if it works, can I remove those privileges later?

[bphillips2]

If it helps, I tried giving these cron jobs sudo privileges by using the command "sudo crontab -e" and placing the same jobs there. That also didn't work. Wouldn't that be the same as giving justin ​admin privileges?

[Dave_L]

Does the directory /home/justin/zurmo/app/protected/commands exist?

[bphillips2]

Yes. Home/justin/zurmo/app/protected/commands exists. I also gave it permissions using "chmod 777"

[bphillips2]

I appreciate all the help, I figured out the problem. I was trying to run the cron job as the Zurmo user super but I had changed that a different name.

Thanks for the help!