Ruby script under cron

Rails
1

I have a number of custom scripts that run at the console. Now I want
cron
to take over and run them on a daily basis. If I /usr/bin/run-parts
/etc/cron.daily
at the console all jobs run fine. However, if I leave it to cron and
check next day
there was no indication the scripts had run at all. No change in output
to log.

I wonder if ruby is not able to run under the cron shell (is it that
different than sh?).

Has anyone had to deal with this or can offer a suggestion?

Thanks,

Long

2

I have several rails scripts that run

ruby /dir/to/app/script/runner 'Actions'

and they run just fine. This is on Arch Linux. If you can run them
through the cron command manually, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work from
crond. Could it be some sort of permissions issue?

Jason

3

Jason N. wrote:

I have several rails scripts that run

ruby /dir/to/app/script/runner 'Actions'

and they run just fine. This is on Arch Linux. If you can run them
through the cron command manually, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work from
crond. Could it be some sort of permissions issue?

Jason,

Well crond runs as root so I don’t think permission is the problem. The
difference
seems to be in how I run the script.

ruby /path/script/my_script

Now that you mention it I vaguely recall reference to runner usage. Let
see
if I have this right.

I should
ruby script/generate task my_script
then
ruby /path/script/runner ‘MyScript’
to run it.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Long

4

Hi, Long,

Search the archive of this list for “cron mazel tov” and read to the
end of that thread. It might help.

5

I should
ruby script/generate task my_script

hmm… there is no ‘task’ script. See ruby script/generate --help. Also
found this link

http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowToRunBackgroundJobsInRails/

Long

6

Zachary H. wrote:

Hi, Long,

Search the archive of this list for “cron mazel tov” and read to the
end of that thread. It might help.

I searched on gmane and only found the last posting. But did find many
postings when search with “cron”.

I believe my scripts were missing the ruby initialization line.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require File.dirname(FILE) + ‘/…/config/boot’
Line taken from script/generate and the likes.

I already had the require environment line needed to access my models.

require File.dirname(FILE) + ‘/…/config/environment’

I think I will create a utility class and put all my scripts there. It
will
help clean up my code for sure. Then I can use script/runner
to start the process. In this way all scripts will run under one rails
env instead of a separate one for each.

Thanks again everyone,

Long