Crontab never run on Ubuntu

Question

I have the following crontab setup.

30 * * * 1-5 /home/ubuntu/script_abc.sh 

script_abc.sh has permission -rwxr-xr-x and the following content.

#!/bin/sh
source ~/my_app/venv/bin/activate
export APP_KEY=abkajdfljdasfljdalfk
cd ~/my_app
python ~/my_app/scripts/scan.py 

It seems crontab never run my script. Any idea?

• furas: crontab can run script as different user, with different permitions, and different system's variables. It is good to use full path - not ~/
• user1187968: It seems the error is coming I can't activate the Python virtual env
• furas: and it is is good to use full path for programs - /usr/bin/python. You can get full path for program using which - ie. which python
• Walter A: Remember thast your .profile and .bashrc are skipped by crontab, PATH modifications and other settings are ignored. Try source /home/ubuntu/.profile inside your script or your crontab command.

Answer 1

crontab dosn't set PATH an cannot find the binarys. Add PATH at the top of your script, or with an export at top of crontab.

# for example
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

Answer 2

Is it a local user's crontab or are you making changes in /etc/cron.d/ if it is the latter, you need to mention the user name like I am doing in the below example:

30 14 * * * root <script>

if it is the former, you can.

1. Look at the syslog. You will see what is happening when the cron daemon tried to call your script.

2. Make sure you have absolute path in all your scripts.