Crontab help

I have a cron job setup but it's not working :.

It's set to:

*/5 * * * * /usr/execute/something /home/directory/somescript.cron --extra_config=config.xml


It says (when I just type out the cronjob command):

Reading configuration file: config.xml
[ERROR] Cannot read configuration file: config.xml
Configuration file errors -- exiting.


But I know it's working because when I just type out

python somescript.cron --extra_config=config.xml

it works fine.

What should I do?

Thanks!

If this is working, I want to set it to execute every 24 hours...

How about using the full path for config.xml?

And to get a cron to execute once every 24 hours, say at 2:30 in the morning, you'll need (but already know):
30 2 * * * /yourcommand

If you want to keep testing this thing using cron, you can do:
at now + 1 minute
at> usr/execute/something /home/directory/somescript.cron --extra_config=/fullpath/config.xml
at> ^d

There might be a more graceful way to input 'at' commands, but I'm lazy and do it the above way.


-Scott

It's not executing anything! The script file that is supposed to be updated isn't being updated. Argg, this is so complicated!

the at> thing doesn't work either...

Without knowing exactly what you're running in cron, it's just hard to guess what the problem is. What's the /usr/execute/something? And what does somescript.cron do?

-Scott

I'm trying to python a sitemap script from Google.

I downloaded the sitemap script and got it to work. It looks like --extra_config is not a valid flag. Here's what worked for me:
garth:~/scottdayman.com/sitemap> at now + 1 minute
warning: commands will be executed using /bin/sh
at> /usr/bin/python ~/scottdayman.com/sitemap/sitemap_gen.py --config=config.xml
at> <EOT>
job 51316 at 2006-10-15 16:40

And it emailed me normal results.

-Scott

What email did it send it?

The email was the output of the cronjob, which is exactly what it spews when run manually from the command line:

Reading configuration file: config.xml
Opened URLLIST file: urllist.txt
Walking DIRECTORY "/home/sdayman/scottdayman.com/blah/"
Walking DIRECTORY "/home/sdayman/scottdayman.com/"
Opened ACCESSLOG file: /home/sdayman/logs/scottdayman.com/http/access.log
Opened ACCESSLOG file: /home/sdayman/logs/scottdayman.com/http/access.log.0
Sorting and normalizing collected URLs.
Writing Sitemap file "/home/sdayman/scottdayman.com/sitemap.xml.gz" with 2864 URLs
Notifying search engines.
Notifying: www.google.com
Count of file extensions on URLs:
11 (no extension)
2 .afm
2 .conf
45 .css
1 .db
1 .dis
1 .fcgi
359 .gif
26 .htm
305 .html
3 .ico
1 .inc
38 .jpg
128 .js
3 .pdf
519 .php
1 .php-dist
9 .pl
29 .pm
867 .png
3 .py
102 .txt
1 .wbm
93 .xml
1 .xsd
1 .xslt
1 .zip
311 /
Number of errors: 0
Number of warnings: 0


But the main point is that you used the flag --extra_config=config.xml when it's supposed to just be --config=config.xml

-Scott

I got it fixed, but it won't email me anything. What email address did it send that info to you?