Add Current PATH to crontab

August 23, 2013

Add Current PATH to crontab

Are you sick of your cron job failing because you are not explicitly listing the full path of everything in your shell script? Here’s how to fix it!

Problem

Your script works when you run it from the console but fails in cron.

Cause

Your crontab doesn’t have the right path variables (and possibly shell)

Solution

Add your current shell and path the crontab

Script to do it for you

#!/bin/bash
#
# Date: August 22, 2013
# Author: Steve Stonebraker
# File: add_current_shell_and_path_to_crontab.sh
# Description: Add current user's shell and path to crontab
# Source: http://brakertech.com/add-current-path-to-crontab
# Github: hhttps://github.com/ssstonebraker/braker-scripts/blob/master/working-scripts/add_current_shell_and_path_to_crontab.sh

# function that is called when the script exits (cleans up our tmp.cron file)
function finish { [ -e "tmp.cron" ] && rm tmp.cron; }

#whenver the script exits call the function "finish"
trap finish EXIT

########################################
# pretty printing functions
function print_status { echo -e "\x1B[01;34m[*]\x1B[0m $1"; }
function print_good { echo -e "\x1B[01;32m[*]\x1B[0m $1"; }
function print_error { echo -e "\x1B[01;31m[*]\x1B[0m $1"; }
function print_notification { echo -e "\x1B[01;33m[*]\x1B[0m $1"; }
function printline { 
  hr=-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  printf '%s\n' "${hr:0:${COLUMNS:-$(tput cols)}}"
}
####################################
# print message and exit program
function die { print_error "$1"; exit 1; }

####################################
# user must have at least one job in their crontab
function require_gt1_user_crontab_job {
        crontab -l &> /dev/null
        [ $? -ne 0 ] && die "Script requires you have at least one user crontab job!"
}


####################################
# Add current shell and path to user's crontab
function add_shell_path_to_crontab {
    #print info about what's being added
    print_notification "Current SHELL: ${SHELL}"
    print_notification "Current PATH: ${PATH}"

    #Add current shell and path to crontab
    print_status "Adding current SHELL and PATH to crontab \nold crontab:"

    printline; crontab -l; printline

    #keep old comments but start new crontab file
    crontab -l | grep "^#" > tmp.cron

    #Add our current shell and path to the new crontab file
    echo -e "SHELL=${SHELL}\nPATH=${PATH}\n" >> tmp.cron 

    #Add old crontab entries but ignore comments or any shell or path statements
    crontab -l | grep -v "^#" | grep -v "SHELL" | grep -v "PATH" >> tmp.cron

    #load up the new crontab we just created
    crontab tmp.cron

    #Display new crontab
    print_good "New crontab:"
    printline; crontab -l; printline
}

require_gt1_user_crontab_job
add_shell_path_to_crontab

Source

https://github.com/ssstonebraker/braker-scripts/blob/master/working-scripts/add_current_shell_and_path_to_crontab.sh

Sample Output

cron