Node Error spawn /bin/sh ENOENT on remote server

Question

Okay I know there are multiple questions regarding this topic, I read most of them and nothing helped.

I am trying to have a node server run a python script periodically. For this I've got the following code:

const
 { exec } = require('child_process');
const fs = require('fs');
let config = [
{
 "title": "My Python Script",
 "description": "A script that can scrape website data",
 "command": "python3 collect_data.py",
 "dir": "../file_folder",
 "minutesBetweenExecution": 60
}
];
const intervals = [];
function startCronjobs() {
 while (intervals.length > 0) {
 clearInterval(intervals.pop());
 }
 console.log("Starting cronjobs...")
 for (let i = 0; i < config.length; i++) {
 const cron = config[i];
 const func = () => {
 exec(cron.command, { cwd: cron.dir, timeout: 40 * 60000 }, (err, stdout, stderr) => {
 if (err) {
 // node couldn't execute the command
 console.error('Command could not be executed. Error: ', err, ' cron entry: ', cron.title);
 return;
 }
 console.log('Output after ', cron.title);
 // the *entire* stdout and stderr (buffered)
 console.log(`stdout: ${stdout}`);
 console.log(`stderr: ${stderr}`);
 });
 };
 intervals.push(setInterval(func, parseInt(cron.minutesBetweenExecution) * 60000));
 console.log('Started Cronjob', cron.title);
 func();
 }
}
startCronjobs();

As you can see, the script just runs exec with a specified command and working directory. Yet, when trying to execute func() node throws the error specified above.

Stuff I've tried to fix this:

• Use an absolute path for the working directory
• checked if python3 is in PATH: which python3 returns /usr/bin/python3
• run the node server with sudo
• debug logged process.env.PATH: /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games

The weird thing about this is: When I am trying to run this on my local linux machine, it works perfectly. On my remote server, however, it does not. What am I missing?

• robertklep: What exactly is that remote server? /bin/sh is missing, so it's not a regular Linux server I'd say.
• Taxel: it is a regular cloud server running Ubuntu 18.04
• robertklep: So you can log in on that server and execute /bin/sh yourself? You could try to use the shell option for child_process.exec so it points directly to the Python executable, but it seems strange that a regular Linux server doesn't have /bin/sh
• Taxel: /bin/sh -c ls shows the folder contents, so yeah, it does exist
• robertklep: Ruling out an invalid shell, the only other reason I can think of that will cause that error is an invalid cwd, but you already ruled that out too. So still strange.

Answer 1

Okay, I am an idiot.

The folder on my local machine is named differently from the git repo and therefore the folder on the server, because I just git cloned it.

Fix: change _ in the working directory to - and it works...