tc1364 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Unable to run code as a cron job on a Unix box but when running the code from the command line it works fine. The Perl code creates a child process that calls a subroutine that executes a Expect script (non-Perl). Can you please show me how to set up my PATH correctly so that it will run as a cron job? Several things have been tried but with no success.

2006-03-03 Retitled by planetscape, as per Monastery guidelines
Original title: 'Path Trouble'

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: (OT) Path Trouble
by philcrow (Priest) on Mar 02, 2006 at 17:34 UTC
    We use absolute paths in cron scripts. This is sort of for security and mostly to avoid environment issues like the one you seem to be hitting.

    Phil

[reply]
      Yes and it is there. Please see below. # CSCANS Automation 45 12 * * 0-6 /ossd/tc1364/cscans/bin/start_cscans.pl
[reply]
        I don't mean just in the cron entry. I also mean inside that script, whenever it refers to other scripts, the paths used are all absolute.

        Phil

[reply]
Re: (OT) Path Trouble
by rinceWind (Monsignor) on Mar 02, 2006 at 17:17 UTC

    You may well find that PATH is not being set by cron as it is not sourcing in .bashrc or .profile - this is expected and normal behaviour.

    You have access to PATH as $ENV{PATH}, which you can set inside your script before you fork. %ENV is available for dumping out for debugging purposes.

    --

    Oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
    My friends all rate Windows, I must disagree.
    Your powers of persuasion will set them all free,
    So oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
    (Missquoting Janis Joplin)

[reply]
      This was already tried and didn't work. The cron job returns the below. Also, the local to this object code is in my PATH. Your "cron" job on osdsun60 /ossd/tc1364/cscans/bin/start_cscans.pl produced the following output: ld.so.1: dms_start.exp: fatal: libtcl8.3.so: open failed: No such file or direct ory Killed commands will be executed using /usr/bin/sh job 1141324921.a at Thu Mar 2 12:42:01 2006
[reply]

        Looks from the diagnostic that the problem might be with $ENV{LD_LIBRARY_PATH} rather than $ENV{PATH}. Which flavour of Unix are you running?

        By the way, for readability, could you please put <code> tags around your output.

        --

        Oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
        My friends all rate Windows, I must disagree.
        Your powers of persuasion will set them all free,
        So oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
        (Missquoting Janis Joplin)

[reply]

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