PHP from command line...path problems

Question

I'm not really an administrator and need some help setting up a cron, well actually calling a PHP script from the command line in the first place.

I have a PHP5 script that I need to run at the following location:

/var/www/apps/myapp/services/myservice.php

Before setting up a cron for that, I wanted to test this manually, like so:

php /var/www/apps/myapp/services/myservice.php 

This results in nothing. I can confirm that that script did not run. There is also no error. However, if I cd into the directory, and then call the script:

cd /var/www/apps/myapp/services php myservice.php 

It does work, as I can see from the log file of that script. It must be something incredibly simple that I'm overlooking, but how can I call that PHP script from the command line in one go, without going into the directory first?

PS: I'm on Debian Edge, using Apache2 and PHP5.

Answer 1

Go to http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.php and read the bulletpoint/info that says "The CLI SAPI does not change the current directory to the directory of the executed script!" This is probably why you're getting the error.

It should work if you make cron cd into your services directory before it runs the app like this:

01 * * * * myuser cd /var/www/apps/myapp/services; /usr/bin/php /var/www/apps/myapp/services/myservice.php

Answer 2

Have you checked to make sure there's not an alias to php that's causing that behavior?

Answer 3

Do a which php from a command prompt to figure out the location of php and then modify your cron entry to call <path to php>/php /var/www/apps/myapp/services/myservice.php