php script from sh from crontab die with no traces

Question

in my crontab there is a script starting at 2:40 AM, executing some routines both from sh commands and php scripts starting from sh files.

the line in crontab looks like this:

SHELL=/BIN/BASH PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/mypath 40 2 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.twoam 

inside the folder cron.twoam there is one script, let's call it script1: inside script 1 some other scripts get called, and they are executed fine. Then it comes time of this script let's call it script2, called from script1. i leave traces both on txt files and system logs to check what happens.

echo "exec script2" >> /mypath/txtlog /mypath/script2 > /mypath/txtlog2 echo "end of script2" >> /mypath/txtlog logger -p local1.info "09@ script2 executed" echo "end of crontwoam" >> /mypath/txtlog date >> /mypath/txtlog 

.... other script that runs fine

now let's see what is inside script2:

some scripts.... /mypath/subpath/script3 other scripts... 

now let's check script3:

various php commands cd /phppath/ php /phppath/myscript.php >> /mypath/myphplog php /phppath/otherscript.php >> /mypath/myphplog 

other commands

and finally comes the php script. the php script has various included script. every one of them execute normally except one. whenever i put it from line 2 to line 90 the execution will silently stop there.

so it comes the part where i do

include("phpscript2.php"); 

and things after does not get executed.

phpscripts2.php runs fine if executed by command line with php phpscripts2.php by my user or by root.

inside phpscripts2 there is ( i include meaningfull parts):

echo "started phpscripts2" exec("mysqldump ......"); ftp_connect(); file_get_contents("https://someotherscriptsondifferentserver"); echo "ended phpscripts2"

now what i find in logs: in /mypath/txtlog i found both

exec script2 

and

end of script 2 

in myphplog i found

started phpscript2 

and row after

started otherphpscript 

i' m missing end of phpscript2 that end prematurly. run time of phpscript2 is about 2 minutes.

i can't find traces in any log of some error. where could i look?

EDIT:

i forgot to add that if make a sh file that calls just this script, and i make a custom crontab line to call it just for test, everything runs.

Answer 1

You're not capturing stderr in the script so that should be sent by email to the cron file's owner. To capture stderr use 2>&1 to send to the same file as stdout or 2> /some/other/file

This was the comment that lead me to the problem.

i redirected the stdErr in a text file and i could finally see it. I had a duplicate function that was coming out just in crontab. This because the full script had a series of require_once plus a lonely require. This was of no harm untill i added a small function in a common required file and i did not notice that there was still a require in place of require_once. The error was mailed of course from crontab but i did not setup the sendmail yet so nothing was coming out.