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Jared Henderson
Asked: 2010-01-28 07:03:18 +0800 CST

how to change cron shell for OSX Leopard

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I have a script that runs fine if I invoke it from the command line, using Bash. But when cron tries to run it, it fails with a "mysql: command not found" error.

I think this is because cron is not using bash as it's shell, but I can't figure out how to make cron use bash.

I tried adding this to the top of the script:

#!/bin/bash

But no joy. How do I force cron to use bash as it's shell? I'm kind of new to bash and cron, so I may be missing something simple. I read several serverfault posts (would link to them all, but I can't, new user) and tried to understand and apply the info as best I could, plus googled a ton, but am stuck.

mac-osx bash cron osx-leopard

2 Answers

  1. it's best to use absolute paths to commands in cron scripts. so that you do not rely on any PATH settings that you may have customised.

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  2. Best Answer

    Pulegium is right, it isn't the type of shell thats the problem it is the PATH. When cron runs it has a very limited search path, instead of putting mysql in your command you should put /path/to/mysql with the actual path to the executable. Usually something like /usr/local/bin/mysql. You'll have to search for it to find the exact path. Also, if it was a shell issue, in your cron file you could run bash and then run your script: /bin/bash /path/to/script.sh, this would ensure that bash was the one processing the file.

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