Each morning when I come in, I find some emails waiting, reports on cron jobs the machine has done -- cpanel updates, user backups, things like this.

I've set up a separate backup of certain files as a cron job. This job runs just fine, and I successfully capture its output to a file. How can I modify the script or the cronjob to email me that output?

This is probably a simple thing, but I'm completely baffled.

Can anyone advise me, or point me to where the info can be found?

Well I don't use cronjobs really but I'm guessing
that you can make it run a .php file, if so, you could
make a php script that reads the output file that you
said you have, and emails it to you, then put that php
file as a cronjob? I've added you to AIM, if this would work
but you don't know how to make the php script, just go on
AIM and I will try and help you out.

That's an interesting approach, and one I'd not thought of.

Now, firstly, I'll bet it can be done from a shell script or perhaps from the cron job itself, but I just don't know how.

However, you've made me wonder about something else -- I've only used php to do things inside web pages. How do you run it on its own?

sorry to be so ignorant ... but I am.

Execute it in shell.

#!/usr/bin/php -f
<?php
print "Test\n";
?>

Please note the #!/usr/bin/php path may vary depending on where you have php installed. Then chmod it 0755. Then run it ./filename.

Originally posted by ChickenSteak
#!/usr/bin/php -f
<?php
print "Test\n";
?>

Please note the #!/usr/bin/php path may vary depending on where you have php installed. Then chmod it 0755. Then run it ./filename.
. . . . <stupified silence :eek: > . . . .

Oh, ChickenSteak, I bow low before your magnificance!

I have two big-ole php books, I've got an official manual with hundreds of pages printed out (version 3 though), and I have in fact done projects in php.

I never knew this! It doesn't say anything in any of my references!

Holy cow!

Now, of course, it leads me to three questions --

1. Generally I've read references suggesting that php is 'more secure' than is perl. Now would that hold true when php is run as a cgi-module (which I'm assuming it is here) or only when php is run as a module inside apache?

2. On my computer, I appear to have php installed in two places:
/usr/bin/php with a length of 4531863, and also at
/usr/local/bin/php with a length of 4528603

Neither seems to be a symlink. They both show the same creation date, which I think is when I rebuilt apache after an openssl upgrade.

There is a difference between them, however. When I run your demo program with /usr/bin/php the output is preceded by
Content-type: text/html
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.1
[and one blank line]

And when I run your demo program with /usr/local/bin/php the content, the X-statement, and the blank line do not appear.

Would you know why php appears to be installed in two places

3. The first thing the demo program actually spits out, is a long complaint about how it cannot find ZendOptimizer.so. Why? And how can I get rid of the complaining message?

I would be grateful if you could shed some light on these mysteries.

Ok to explain the two instances of the php binary one is the newest version of php, and the other is an older version. Go ahead and delete /usr/local/bin/php. As far as security perl/php comparison they're about the same. As far as zend optomizer, zend just now released support for php version 4.3.x so I would go to www.zend.com download the newest version and install zend, and the error should go away.

Originally posted by traktor
I've set up a separate backup of certain files as a cron job. This job runs just fine, and I successfully capture its output to a file. How can I modify the script or the cronjob to email me that output?
I'm glad I asked this question, because I learned some great new stuff about php, which I like a lot.

And -- duh -- I also learned the simple answer to my question. The answer is: don't send the cron output to a file. Then, by default, cron will email it to me, which is what I wanted in the first place.

I had entered the cronjob like this:
5 3 * * * myjobscript.sh > myjoboutput.txt

Well, because I was diverting the output, cron didn't email it to me. I've changed the cron job to:

5 3 * * * myjobscript.sh

And that should do it. Duh!

And thanks for the great new info about php. Also, anybody recommend a clear and decent book about BASH scripting?

I have Linux and Unix Shell Programming, published by Addison-Wesley. Not only does it cover scripting syntax, etc - it also covers your common building blocks for scripts - find, sed, awk, etc. It is a little dense though, and hard to find exactly what you are looking for.