I have Fever RSS server running on a Debian 7 headless server. To update the feeds every 15 minutes I have the following job setup in cron:

07,22,37,52 * * * * curl -L -s https://MyDomain.com/fever/?refresh
(MyDomain.com is set to my correct domain).

This works for a period of time. The first time I set Fever up it worked for a few days and after reading the Fever site recommending a reinstall of Fever if updates started to fail, the second install updated for a few hours. The developer notes that file permissions can interfere with updates and recommends setting the folder permissions of Fever at 777 which I have done. I am also running Tiny Tiny RSS and its cron job never fails.

It does not seem probable that Fever is causing this cron job to fail but I am a bit lost as to what I should look at or try. From the web interface or iOS apps a manual refresh of the server works every time.

Help is appreciated!
THANKS!

Reinstalling anything on Linux / UNIX without troubleshooting the actual cause of the problem is like Ostrich tactics: sticking your head in the sand and hoping problems go away automagically. Besides that any directory having octal mode 0777 is asking for problems, it's bad advice and shows the developer knows or cares sh*t (with all due respect). So if this is feverrssreader.codeplex.com then know that in a 2009 Techcrunch article the author boasted he "also support his customers personally." so you should get support for an app that has no trial version and comes with a USD 30 price tag.


...alternatively use a product that actually works and doesn't require quite unnecessary ops or anything that goes against the grain:

This is why I posted my issue here, to find the solution.

Tiny Tiny RSS works well however the iOS apps are either buggy or half baked. Reeder which supports Fever on iOS is outstanding and if it had support for Tiny Tiny RSS I would not be posting here. I read my RSS feeds on mobile devices 90 percent of the time so the quality/experience of the client is important.

I agree with the sentiment however this server is behind pfSense so not very exposed in reality.

If someone has any suggestions as to why cron may work for a short while then fail I'd appreciate some input.

What kind of interpreter handles what points to (PHP, Ruby, Python etc, etc)?
Since you use 'curl -L' what does the resulting redirect URL look like?
Do all "?refresh" redirect URLS return a 200 in your web server log?
Does using other cron job interval, say 00,30 work OK?
Is there any server or client side caching?
Any if-not-modified or other headers?
What is the actual 'curl -L' output?
Have you tried debug mode?