Basic Cron Job Help!
 

Hi Everyone,
I am trying to create a cron job that runs every 4 hours. This is what I put in my crontab file:
01 */4 * * * tester/home/tester/ff/python ff.py

I get this error however
/bin/sh: /home/tester/ff/python: No such file or directory

All I'm trying to do is create a cron job that runs the command "python ff.py" every 4 hours. Can anyone help me here?

Thanks
I'm using Fedora btw.

It wont work like that. Create a script under the home directory and make it executable, in that script call the python interpreter and script.
In myscript

python ff.py

Something like that.

hth

That won't work either as the file "tester" probably doesn't exist either. And, if /home/tester/ff/python is the path to the python interpreter, then it should work fine the way you are trying to do it. However, you have a path of "tester/home/tester/ff/python". Are you sure your error message isn't:

You don't specify a user in a crontab entry. The cron job will be run by the owner of that particular crontab. If you need to run a cron job as a particular user, create a different crontab file for that user (crontab -e username).

Try this instead:
HTH

Forrest

sorry, my mistake there should be a space in there i just copied it down wrong when posting this
it actually appears like this:
/bin/sh: tester /home/tester/ff/python: No such file or directory

I'll try lord-fu suggestion

Thanks

In my example tester is the "who" not a path.


Edit: forrest is correct though a user should have their own crontab if you are wanting to run jobs as that user.
And on that note I have 666 posts, there goes my day :[

lord-fu & sbabcock23, I think the problem may be that you are trying to edit a non-system crontab entry with a system crontab entry format. Only the system crontab (/etc/crontab) uses the user field. The root crontab doesn't, and neither do any for normal users.

sbabcock23, If you are running "crontab -e" as root to edit the crontab, then there isn't a user field as this is the root user's crontab, not the system crontab. The entire line after the time specifications is treated as the command/options. If you are editing /etc/crontab directly, then you would use a user field. I typically leave this file alone and create per user crontab entris as it makes copying crontab entries from Linux to Solaris and back compatible. If you are running "crontab -e" as the tester user (what I suggest) then you will also not have a user field in the crontab entry.

HTH

Forrest

That is correct forrest I was under the impression in the op example that this was the system crontab, therfore I left the user entry in my example. Sorry for any confusions.

And on that note I am above 666 posts, whew.

Yeah, your post count was getting me a little worried.

:)

hey, I got the cron to work except, in my python code I have file = open(filename, 'a') and python is throwing an error:
sys.stdout = open(logfile, 'a')
IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: 'log.txt'

but this works if I run it manually but not from the cron job. I added the cron job by using the command crontab -e.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Try using the full path to log.txt.

HTH

Forrest

yup that worked thanks!