Question

zPanel Cron Not Working? Can not add cron or task not being executed

Posted November 29, 2014 14.7k views

Hi we have zPanel 10.1
Im trying to add cron but its not working, im getting script does not exist error or when path is accepted our script file is not actual executed :(

here is what i tried:

php -q  /var/zpanel/hostdata/<*account*>/public_html/<*domain*>/api/cron/index.php

or

php -q  /<*domain*>/api/cron/index.php

says script does not exist

I can add something like this:

/<*domain*>/api/cron/index.php

but file is not being executed :(

Crontab is running, process is up and i see zPanels internal things are being executed just fine.

tnx for help!

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alexus
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alexus

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9 answers
bubbl November 29, 2014

says script does not exist
Did you check the path for the file is correct, and the file really exists?

also, check if the file has read/exec permissions for cron owner.

check /var/log/cron if it throws any errors, as well as /var/log/messages to shed some light

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alexus November 29, 2014

path exist, i copy and paste :)

/var/log/cron

it did give me an error running under root

-bash: /var/log/cron: Permission denied

Messages log is empty. Only iptables info is there and old one

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bubbl November 29, 2014

did you create the cron entry from within zpanel or manually?

are you sure you check the cron log as su?

paste ls -l output for the script path and full cron entry.

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  • alexus November 29, 2014

    I used zPanel web interface (im not extremely good with linux)

    
[root@01 ~]# sudo su
[root@01 ~]# /var/log/cron
bash: /var/log/cron: Permission denied

    what “ls -l” only gives me list of files in directory im curently in, what do i do with it?

    By the way tnx for taking time helping me ;)

    Reply Report
  • bubbl November 29, 2014 
    ls -l /path/where/the/php/file/is/supposed/to/be

    ;)

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bubbl November 29, 2014

I see, you wanted to execute the file instead of view it.

cat /var/log/cron

will give you the output of the file. also:

tail -n 60 /var/log/cron

will show last 60 lines.

to view cron entries, type:

crontab -u apache -l

as su user. this should give you all the cronjobs ran by your web server/zpanel

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  • alexus November 29, 2014 
    cat /var/log/cron

    gave me log file i need alredy, thats where i see zPanle files but not mine nor any errors (well hourly one output is bush not fond or something)

    Nov 29 17:01:01 01 crond[14335]: (root) CMD (root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly)
Nov 29 17:05:01 01 crond[14407]: (root) CMD (root /usr/bin/php -q /etc/zpanel/panel/bin/daemon.php >> /dev/null 2>&1)
Nov 29 17:10:01 01 crond[14484]: (root) CMD (root /usr/bin/php -q /etc/zpanel/panel/bin/daemon.php >> /dev/null 2>&1)
Nov 29 17:15:01 01 crond[14553]: (root) CMD (root /usr/bin/php -q /etc/zpanel/panel/bin/daemon.php >> /dev/null 2>&1)
Nov 29 17:20:01 01 crond[14614]: (root) CMD (root /usr/bin/php -q /etc/zpanel/panel/bin/daemon.php >> /dev/null 2>&1)
Nov 29 17:25:01 01 crond[14678]: (root) CMD (root /usr/bin/php -q /etc/zpanel/panel/bin/daemon.php >> /dev/null 2>&1)
Nov 29 17:30:01 01 crond[14742]: (root) CMD (root /usr/bin/php -q /etc/zpanel/panel/bin/daemon.php >> /dev/null 2>&1)
Nov 29 17:35:01 01 crond[14810]: (root) CMD (root /usr/bin/php -q /etc/zpanel/panel/bin/daemon.php >> /dev/null 2>&1)
Nov 29 17:40:01 01 crond[15097]: (root) CMD (root /usr/bin/php -q /etc/zpanel/panel/bin/daemon.php >> /dev/null 2>&1)
Nov 29 17:45:01 01 crond[15174]: (root) CMD (root /usr/bin/php -q /etc/zpanel/panel/bin/daemon.php >> /dev/null 2>&1)
Nov 29 17:50:01 01 crond[15280]: (root) CMD (root /usr/bin/php -q /etc/zpanel/panel/bin/daemon.php >> /dev/null 2>&1)
Nov 29 17:55:01 01 crond[15361]: (root) CMD (root /usr/bin/php -q /etc/zpanel/panel/bin/daemon.php >> /dev/null 2>&1)
Nov 29 18:00:01 01 crond[15417]: (root) CMD (root /usr/bin/php -q /etc/zpanel/panel/bin/daemon.php >> /dev/null 2>&1)
Nov 29 18:01:01 ny crond[15428]: (root) CMD (root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly)
Nov 29 18:05:01 ny crond[15479]: (root) CMD (root /usr/bin/php -q /etc/zpanel/panel/bin/daemon.php >> /dev/null 2>&1)

    tail -n 60 /var/log/cron - shows same thing

    crontab -u apache -l - permission denied.

    So we know there are other cron jobs, problem is hot to add new one preferably through zPanel UI, worst case i survive if i add few manually, but if UI is there i think it should work

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  • alexus November 29, 2014

    as to LS

    it shows my index.php is there

    
[root@01 ~]# ls -l /var/zpanel/hostdata/<account>/public_html/<domain>/api/cron
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 697 Nov 28 01:24 index.php
    Reply Report
  • bubbl November 29, 2014

    the file should be owned by the same user the domain/account files are owned by, not root, e.g. apache:apache.

    check what ownership is for other files within the path (with the same ls -l command)

    /var/zpanel/hostdata/<account>/public_html/<domain>/

    and set the same for the cron.php file with

    sudo chown user:group /path/to/index.php
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bubbl November 29, 2014

crontab -u apache -l - permission denied.

^ you may be trying to access cron as default user, not root…

try one more thing from /var/log/cron (if the output here is not the full output - if that’s all there is, you can omit this part):

grep "api/cron/index.php" /var/log/cron

will show you if the command is even taken into consideration. if the output shows nothing, it means the command is not being executed as it might have wrong file permissions, i.e. not being executable by webserver user.

if there is no entry in cron log, it means the script is really not being executed.
output of:

grep "api/cron/index.php" /var/log/messages

might show you any permission errors.

from the command line, try executing the script (as root):

php /var/zpanel/hostdata/<*account*>/public_html/<*domain*>/api/cron/index.php

(without -q option) to see if there are any errors while executing it.

and, for the script path for your cron entry, try setting:

/public_html/<*domain*>/api/cron/index.php

not sure about zpanel, but this might be the correct path for files.

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  • bubbl November 29, 2014

    for manual cron entry, you also should use web user cron, not root.

    if crontab command fails, all the crons are placed in

    /var/spool/cron/

    directory. check if the files inside have the command you set up (most probably apache cron). if not, add it manually:

    * * * * * /usr/bin/php -q /var/zpanel/hostdata/<*account*>/public_html/<*domain*>/api/cron/index.php > /dev/null 2>&1

    the asterisks represent times of cron entry execution:

    minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week

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  • alexus November 29, 2014

    im about to reach maximum brain temperature :(

    grerep did not help, nothing is outputted, im both cases

    php /var/zpanel/hostdata/<*account*>/public_html/<*domain*>/api/cron/index.php

    this worked fine, script generated email and i got it delivered, so script working this way.
    what i noticed though, if i acces script through web browser i get email form Apache, and here i got email form Root

    as to 

    /public_html/<domain>/api/cron/index.php

    zPanel refused that, saying script does not exist :(

    how do i check ownership?

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  • bubbl November 29, 2014

    you can check ownership with ls -l command. as I wrote before:

    ls -l /var/zpanel/hostdata/<account>/public_html/<domain>/

    will show you who the files are owned by. instead of

    root root

    as it was the case with index.php output, you chould get other user/group and set the permissions for index.php to be the same, e.g. if files under /var/zpanel/hostdata/<account>/public_html/<domain>/

    show they’re owned by

    apache apache

    (e.g.

    [user@machine] $ ls -l /var/zpanel/hostdata/<account>/public_html/<domain>/
-rw-r--r--  1 apache apache 3.2K Nov 18 20:00 index.php

    )

    run:

    sudo chmod apache:apache /var/zpanel/hostdata/<*account*>/public_html/<*domain*>/api/cron/index.php

    to edit cron from command line, you should run:

    sudo crontab -u apache -e

    add the entry:

    */10 * * * * /usr/bin/php -q /var/zpanel/hostdata/<*account*>/public_html/<*domain*>/api/cron/index.php > /dev/null 2>&1

    (most probably the defaul crontab editor is vi, in that case, to edit the file hit ’i’, after editing hit [ESC] key, to save type: ’:wq’ - without inverted commas)

    this will run the command every 10 minutes.

    i acces script through web browser i get email form Apache, and here i got email form Root

    this is because if you run the command from command line, you run it as the user you are logged in as (in your case root). if you run it from web browser, it is ran by apache (web server user).

    also, another possibility for cronjob would be to make the cron “visit” webpage with the cron file like this:

    */10 * * * * wget -q -O /dev/null "http://example.com/some/cron/job.php" > /dev/null 2>&1

    this is the same as cronjob with filepath.

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  • alexus November 30, 2014 
    [root@01 ~]# sudo chmod apache:apache /var/zpanel/hostdata/<account>/public_html/<domain>/api/cron/index.php
chmod: invalid mode: `apache:apache'
Try `chmod --help' for more information.

    Did i do something wrong?

    Reply Report
  • bubbl November 30, 2014

    sorry, that’s my mistake.

    i gave you wrong command the second time. just chage chmod to chown and it will change ownership as here:

    chown

    Reply Report
  • alexus November 30, 2014

    ok chown worked

    but is not working, the “vi” does not start, Did i do something wrong?

    sudo crontab -u apache -e
    Reply Report
  • bubbl November 30, 2014

    did anything at all open up when you typed the command?

    Reply Report
  • alexus December 1, 2014

    sorry for delayed reply,
    when i typed that command nothing happened at all. just new line pop up waiting for new command input

    Reply Report
alexus November 29, 2014

how to i switch to “ web user cron”

whats my settings for 10 min?

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americanninja April 12, 2015

Any luck on getting this resolved?

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alexus April 12, 2015

i used wget as work around.
later on in the log i found that “index.php” i was referring to was executing differently when requested from Cron rather then a browser. So i think if i make it look at different includes it would work. PHP error was found in apache error logs for that domain

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alexdo September 13, 2021

Hello, all

I have not personally used zPanel, but to me, this project looks completely abandoned. There have been no updates to that repository for the past 7 years:

https://github.com/zpanel/installers

The last installer script which was supported was for Ubuntu 12, which has been EOF for a very long time:

https://github.com/zpanel/installers/tree/master/install

I would recommend choosing a different control panel. You could start by having a look at this page here for some useful Control panel tutorials:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tags/control-panels

There are a lot of web panels available (most of them are free to use) that you can choose in order to manage your server. What I can recommend is to try them as in this way you can see if it really suits your needs.

I will list the top control panels that I recommend:

CentOS Web Panel
Vesta CP
Webmin
Ajenti
ISPConfig

and of course I need to mention Plesk although it’s not free it’s been available for a while and it’s always been the main cPanel competitor. It has a lot of build-in features and a lot of plugins that you can install and you can always reach to their support team if needed which is something that might come in handy in time.

You’ve now got some great options if you want to use a control panel with your server but you don’t want to pay for a license. I’ve tried to layout most of the available options, but which one is best will ultimately depend on your individual needs.

Regards,
Alex

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