Crontab from PHP

[dyluck]

Hi there,

 

How do you edit the crontab file from php?

 

I need to make adjustments to the crontab file from mysql / php

 

where would I start.  I have searched high and low and came up with very little.

[AbraCadaver]

Do you want to edit a specific user's crontab or cron jobs run by the system?

[dyluck]

Cron jobs run by the system

basically the main crontab -e

 

Here is what I have so far:

mfd.sh

#!/bin/sh
crontab /home/dyluck/cron/mfd.txt
echo 'CRONTAB HAS BEEN UPDATED'
# end script

 

mfd.txt

0 2 * * * indexer --config /usr/local/sphinx/etc/sphinx.conf --all --rotate
3 2 * * * /usr/local/sphinx/bin/searchd --stop
4 2 * * * /usr/local/sphinx/bin/searchd*

 

cronmfd.php

<? system('sh /home/dyluck/cron/mfd.sh');
?>

 

Basically I figure that I can easily edit a txt file and then envoke a linux shell script from php.

When I invoke my mfd.sh file from SSH it works fine.

When I do it wiht the php command, it doesn't work

[dyluck]

For the life of me, this command will not work.  how to i get php to echo the errors (if any?)

 

shell_exec('crontab /home/dyluck/cron/mfd.txt');

[dyluck]

well figured this one out on my own.

first of all, it will update the user's cron not the main system cron (still want to figure that one out)

 

Make sure that the cron.deny file doesn't have "nobody" or "whatever user the apache is using" in the list.

make the cron.allow file in the same directory as cron.deny (if its not already there) and do the following:

 

type:

 

nobody

apacheuserid

 

CTRL X to save and Y and enter.

 

to find out what apacheuserid is, do the following in a php file:

 

$result = shell_exec("whoami");

echo "I am $result";

 

once you edit the cron.allow file,

restart cron

 

# /etc/init.d/crond restart

 

Try again and it will write to the user cron file.

 

to find the user's cron file to see if you even have one,  do a  # locate cron

you will see one with your user id.   

 

[AbraCadaver]

Put your cron file in /etc/cron.d/ and the system will run it.  Or you can link to the file in /home/dyluck/cron/ so that it is still writable.  You need to specify the user to run as in the file:

 

0 2 * * * root    indexer --config /usr/local/sphinx/etc/sphinx.conf --all --rotate
3 2 * * * root    /usr/local/sphinx/bin/searchd --stop
4 2 * * * root   /usr/local/sphinx/bin/searchd*