I'm really running into a wall trying to figure this out. I have a Bash script and narrowed down the one command that doesn't seem to work via cron and it's my pgp decrypting line. Works fine if I run the command via terminal but if I run it via cron it doesn't output anything.

crontab -e shows the cronjob and it runs, creates the log file with no output. Is there maybe something I need to run as well? Permissions look set, unless the cron is running as a different user(I was under the assumption if it showed up under crontab while logged into that user, then it would run as that user.

Hi,

If you run a script from cron make sure the script doesn't use any environment variables. Those variables are present when you are logged in as user X, but are not present when running from cron.

You might want to post the part you think isn't working so we can have a look.

Hope this helps.

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In the user's crontab you can also define necessary environment variables and a different PATH. Maybe something is missing.

you can launch the script with
#!/bin/bash -l

which adds all the user env vars or

launching it from crontab or script as follows :

su USER -c " COMMAND "

So this is my code below. I tried the su USER -c with no luck as well.

My cron is

11 35 * * * /home/user/Scripts/test

Shouldn't it be:

Sorry, i just wrote it backwards, it is 35 11. but the cron is running, it's just not running right.

Ok. Do you get any email about the failed cron job?

Like I said, the job works as the log.txt is created. But it's blank. However, when I run it in terminal the file gets created but the output is there.

You checked that there is no email? cron will send an email for failed jobs.

where would it email to?

The local user in the machine. Just type mail. It could also be defined in your crontab to send it to a different user or none at all.

Hi,

gpg sends output to screen which might be a problem when there is no /dev/tty to write to. Add the --no-tty option to the gpg line.

gpg --no-tty --passphrase password -d /home/user/Scripts/file.txt.pgp > /home/user/Scripts/log.txt

Your script also has a command that clears the terminal, but there is no terminal when run from cron, this would be better:
BTW: This isn't too smart: It shows your passphrase, which can be read by root and thus give root the possibility to read your encrypted stuff (which root cannot without the passphrase).

Anyway, hope this helps.

I also wouldn't assume gpg is always going to be in the $PATH in cron.

Would you recommend a better way? I tried probably for 3 days trying to read text output to determine when to send a password response, nothing ever worked. This was the only way for the password to be sent that worked for me.