Cron job for RSS posts instead of vb script

[kh99]

What's posted in that thread is a little confusing, but the first "cd" part is supposed to be a path to a directory. So maybe try this:

cd /home/northwes/public_html/world/.; php /home/northwes/public_html/world/cron.php

Also that assumes that the "php" program will be in the default path. Do you have any command line access? You might try logging in and entering the command in a shell and see if it runs (maybe log in as the user that cron runs as, if you can determine that).

[John Diver]

Originally Posted by kh99

What's posted in that thread is a little confusing, but the first "cd" part is supposed to be a path to a directory. So maybe try this:

cd /home/northwes/public_html/world/.; php /home/northwes/public_html/world/cron.php

Also that assumes that the "php" program will be in the default path. Do you have any command line access? You might try logging in and entering the command in a shell and see if it runs (maybe log in as the user that cron runs as, if you can determine that).

Thanks again for the reply.

I tried that but unfortunately it doesn't work and I am just using a shared account so no command access.

[kh99]

OK, well, hopefully someone else will now why.

Is there any way you could ask your host what the right command would be (to run a php script through cron)? I suspect that the first "cd" part is correct, but it could be that "php" doesn't work unless you explicitly use the path to the php command.

Another thing you might try is "curl" followed by the url (not the file path) of your cron.php file.

[John Diver]

Hey Kevin,

Would that be like this:

cd /home/northwes/public_html/world/.; curl www.mysite.com/cron.php

Thanks again for helping Kevin

[kh99]

You don't need the cd part, so just:

curl www.mysite.com/cron.php

Unfortunately I don't have a linux system where I can try a cron job like that, so I'm just guessing. There could be a path problem trying to use "curl", I don't know.

[John Diver]

Thanks Kevin!

This seems to be working, but I think it can cause some problems.

What happens if the feeds are being fetched by Rssposter running on the cron while it is already doing the same task?

I.e. just for example, cron is set to run every minute (Because curl /cron.php would only run 1 task at a time, then until for another minute to run the next scheduled task) the RSSposter could be at the bottom of the list, take 5 minutes to run and maybe by the time the cron comes back to the rssposter.php it is still running.

Would that effect it?

Thanks again Kevin!

[kh99]

I think if you set the cronjob to run often enough, you could remove the cron.php image from your footer, then it shouldn't be a problem. But even if you don't it should be OK because it's no different than 2 users loading cron.php at around the same time. I think the scripts are written to handle that.