I'm using external cron with apache and I've been able to get a simple python script to run by calling it directly using
*/1 * * * * root cd /home/www-data/web2py/applications/appname/private/ scripts && python scriptname.py -J -C -D 1 >> /tmp/cron.output 2>&1 The debugging output also was working. Now what I want to do is call a web2py controller function using external cron. First I tried */1 * * * * root cd /home/www-data/web2py/applications/appname/private/ scripts && python scriptname.py -M -J -C -D 1 >> /tmp/cron.output 2>&1 This ran the script but I got an error with my logger that said that db was not defined. My script needs to use the Database. I saw that -M needs to be used with -S so I added that to my cron line. */1 * * * * root cd /home/www-data/web2py/applications/appname/private/ scripts && python scriptname.py -S appname -M -J -C -D 1 >> /tmp/ cron.output 2>&1 That still left me with a "db is not defined" error. So now I'm thinking perhaps you are supposed to put */1 * * * * web2py cd /var/www/web2py/ && python web2py.py -J -C -D 1 >> /tmp/cron.output 2>&1 in your external crontab file and then use web2py's application crontab file to run a controller function so I added */1 * * * * root *autoemail/send_autoemails to my application crontab and let it run. In my external cron logs I saw that web2py did indeed start up but my script may or may not have run. The desired DB result didn't happen. Two questions: 1.) Which method is correct and what am I doing wrong? 2.) How do I log errors from a cron line that looks like this: */1 * * * * root *autoemail/send_autoemails so I can see if at least my controller function ran?
