Stephen Cattaneo wrote:
Hello all,
I am attempting to execute an automated test (written in Python) via
cron. I have to check the HOSTNAME variable as part of the test, oddly
under cron the HOSTNAME environment variable is not in the os.environ
dictionary. I know that cron runs in a subshell that does not have all
of the normally set environment variables. HOSTNAME is not one of those
variables, it is set even in cron's subshell. Why doesn't python get
this variable? Is this a bug in python2.4?
Cron doesn't normally use a shell at all. It just runs the
requested program in a subprocess. So there's no shell involved,
and you don't get a shell-type user environment. If you have
a crontab line like
10 3 * * * /usr/bin/python someprogram.py
there's no shell. You can try
10 3 * * * /bin/sh /usr/bin/python someprogram.py
which will load a shell, which in turn will load Python.
Or, in Python, you can use "socket.gethostname()", which will
get you the host name used for networking purposes.
John Nagle
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