How to set up Cron to trigger a Rake?

December 22, 2013 6.4k views
adrian.agrant
By:
adrian.agrant
Hello - I have a rake task that I'd like to schedule a cron to run. My Rails 4 droplet is running Ubuntu 12.10 (Nginx + Unicorn). Here's what I have in crontab: SHELL=/bin/bash PATH=/sbin:/bin/usr/bin HOME=/ MAILTO="xxx@gmail.com" * * * * * /bin/bash -l -c 'source ~/.bash_profile && cd /home/rails && RAILS_ENV=production bin/rake populate:fetch_nr_songs' I get this error /etc/profile.d/rvm.sh: line 9: ps: command not found /etc/profile.d/rvm.sh: line 10: ps: command not found /usr/local/rvm/scripts/rvm: line 96: dirname: command not found ERROR: Missing proper 'which' command. Make sure it is installed before using RVM! Any fix would be much appreciated thanks
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6 Answers
kamaln7 MOD December 22, 2013
PATH=/sbin:/bin/usr/bin

Try deleting that line, does that fix it?
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adrian.agrant December 22, 2013
Now I get this error message:
/bin/bash: //.bash_profile: No such file or directory
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kamaln7 MOD December 23, 2013
That's because you have HOME set to /. Delete that line too.
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adrian.agrant December 24, 2013
Thanks Kamal for all the help. Unfortunately now the cron doesn't run at all, I don't even get emails with error messages :(

The crontab I've been editing is located in etc/default
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kamaln7 MOD December 24, 2013
Did it have all those variables by default? Try resetting it to how it was before you edited it and using crontab -e to edit the cron instead.
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adrian.agrant December 24, 2013
Thanks Kamal!!!! Removing those variables and changing my RAILS_ENV caused it work!
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  • vgttt June 21, 2017

    Hi Adrian, I know this is an old post, but i'm facing the same issue. What do you mean by "changing my RAILS_ENV"?

    Here is my crontab file:

    * * * * * cd /home/openproject/openproject-ce && /home/openproject/openproject-ce/bin/rake RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec jobs:workoff

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