how to start cron jobs on Qnap?

[L3kris]

I would be ever so happy if anyone would let me in on the secret about cron jobs: How do you access crontab on a Qnap? I have the TS209 and serving (among other pages) an event calendar that should be mailed to participant at fixed times. I've found several how-to's on the net but how to access them?

Thanks!
L3kris

[AndyChuo]

Hi L3kris,

The 'crontab' is located in /mnt/HDA_ROOT/.config/crontab which can be edited using vi via ssh or telnet. After that, issue '/etc/init.d/crond.sh restart' to restart the cron service in order for the new jobs to take effect. Make sure you do understand what you are doing before you start to edit.

Andy

[L3kris]

Thank you - that works

Next I'd like to know how the command line should be written when I want to run a php script. I found a manual on the net instructing to include the php location. Is that correct?
Could you please make an example of, say, a php script "cron.php" placed in the root of Qweb to be run every day at 13H.
I know the first part:

Code: Select all

0 13 * * *

but what from there?
Thank you

[L3kris]

Does nobody know how to make a cron command line that refers to a php script?

[Goggy]

Hmm - dont think you are really knowing what you are doing

[L3kris]

Maybe not but at least it's nice to be told so...

What I need is a script that sends emails twice a week at predefined times. As far as I know that's one of the things cron jobs are for, right? So please enlighten me on how to do it if somebody can do that...

[cgalli]

the command to run cron.php is:

wget /yourpath/cron.php

so the line in crontab is:

0 13 * * * * wget /yourpath/cron.php

[adnovea]

Because QNAP has a CRON capability and after having some troubles with WebCron.Org (missed randomly some tasks),
I've decided to write my own WebCron interface. Few lines of code for the Web Interface and WGET to call the web pages.

BUT ...
when using WGET with the CronTab GUEST account IT DOES NOT WORK !!!
Any other tasks (such as cp, echo, etc) works fine but WGET.
The tasks in the crontab is executed (I can check it because an empty log file is created) but nothing else occurs.

So I've been stuck so close to finish my application - it's puzzling.

Does someone have an idea why WGET is not working when run from the USER crontab ? (#crontab -e -u guest)

Code: Select all

* * * * * /usr/bin/wget --tries=3 --waitretry=30 --spider 'http://MYPAGE' -a /share/HDA_DATA/Qweb/cron.log

This code perfectly works when added into "crontab -e"
but does not work when added with "crontab -e -u guest" which is the account you can access from the Web (Qweb).

Thanks for your help

[pakoistinen]

File system access rights and ownership settings? Did you check them?

I had some troubles with the guest account until I did some 'loosening up' with chmod and chown.

[adnovea]

Thanks Pakoistinen for the advice but I didn't succeed (I'm not good with Linux anyway).
I've tried to chown and chmod the crontab guest file in /tmp/cron/crontabs but w/o success !

So I came back to the basic and wrote directly the command with "crontab -e" (admin account) and I have noticed :
- The command is executed because the log file is created
- BUT there is a problem with WGET

Code: Select all

/usr/bin/wget --tries=3 --waitretry=30 --spider -d 'http://MYWEBSITE' -a /share/HDA_DATA/Qweb/webcron/log.txt

The command above works fine when directly typed into a console.

With the option -d set, the only line in the log file is :
--> DEBUG output created by Wget 1.10 on linux-gnueabi.
and no information about the connexion and so on.

When I reboot the server and manually launch the command above, I have to wait several hours before it works otherwise I get Segmentation fault

So the problem lies problably in WGET which has a strange behavoir rather than the crontab itself

[L3kris]

I have now moved to a TS-219 - does anybody know where the crontab is located on this machine?

[fribse]

My guess:
/etc/config/crontab

[L3kris]

Thanks

[Dennisonline]

My tasks will not run with cronjob, so a have make a simple test file.

I have edit the crontab and add
* * * * * php /sbin/test.php

placed test.php in /sbin

test.php:
<?php
$myFile = "test.html";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'a+') or die("can't open file");
$stringData = "<br>test/br>";
fwrite($fh, $stringData);
fclose($fh);
?>

restart cron
/etc/init.d/crond.sh restart

But no test.html not is found....
find / -name test.html

On my windowsmachine the php script is working.
So what's wrong?

[Dennisonline]

I found ...


crontab /etc/config/crontab
/etc/init.d/crond.sh restart
crontab -l




http://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Add_items_to_crontab