Calling Ant buildfile from cron

pcdude · 10-19-2004, 06:16 AM

HI all.

I hope that this is the right forum for my question.

I'm using mandrake 9.2 and trying to implement nightly builds on my Java Project. I using ANT to do this. I want to setup CRON to do this.
Problem is the the environment variables for ant are not setup when CRON calls ANT, so I must set up these in the script.

Am I correct so far?

The Script that I am calling looks like this:

Code:

export $PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/apache-ant-1.6.2
echo "New path is: " >> /tmp/debug.txt
echo $PATH >> /tmp/debug.txt
export $ANT_HOME=/usr/local/apache-ant-1.6.2
echo "Ant_Home:" >> /tmp/debug.txt
echo $ANT_HOME >> /tmp/debug.txt
ant -buildfile /home/user/tempBuild/build.xml

I used debug.txt to see if the environment variables have changed, and they did not. My Ant script is never run so I assume this is the problem.

What am I doing wrong?

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Hcman · 10-19-2004, 06:22 AM

Did you edit your crontab <crontab -e>?
You can check the current cron jobs in a users crontab with <crontab -l>

Arjan

pcdude · 10-19-2004, 06:54 AM

I edited /etc/crontab directly. Is this wrong?
The build must must be called even if I am not logged in, so I adding the entry to the root's cron table

Hcman · 10-19-2004, 07:26 AM

You can:

1) put your script in /etc/cron.daily and it will be run (surprise) daily.
2) edit your users crontab <crontab -e> (don't edit directly I have always been told) and it will run even if you are not logged in.
Put a line in like this "30 23 * * * <path to your script>" and it will be run every day at 11:30pm.

I'd opt for the second since there is no reason to run your script as root (or is there?).

Arjan

pcdude · 10-19-2004, 09:07 AM

I've taken your advice and added the command using crontab -e
It seems I'm now back at square one.
If I put the Ant command in crontab ( using crontab -e), ANT does not execute because it says that it requires the JAVA_HOME environment variable to be set.
I then went and made a script file that sets the environment variables similar to my orignal post and set crontab to run this.
Nothing happens and I don't know how to debug it since I can't get any output ( > error.txt on the end of the cron command does not work with the script file).

Any additional advice would be appreciated.

Hcman · 10-19-2004, 09:53 AM

Is your script executable?
<chmod +x yourscript>

It works when you try to run it normally right?

Arjan

pcdude · 10-19-2004, 10:02 AM

Yes, my script is executable and it works when I call it from the commad line.

Hcman · 10-19-2004, 05:43 PM

Well then I dunno. Post your exact script and your crontab. Perhaps it's just a typo you have overlooked eh?

Arjan

pcdude · 10-20-2004, 04:36 AM

Oops

I was setting my environment variables in the scripts like

Code:

export $PATH=$PATH:/newpath

instead of

Code:

export PATH=$PATH:/newpath

Anyways it works now, thanks for your help!

Hcman · 10-20-2004, 05:11 AM

I didn't even notice that sheesh!
Glad you got it to work.