Downloading files with bash via cron

Question

I have build a bash script that gets .tar.gz files from IMDb and writes to a log file, the script works when run on its own as I can see the folder with the files present, but when I run the script via cron it doesn't work. Would this be due to permissions? I have edited the sudo crontab file, but I'm not sure what else I need to do.

Answer 1

Try this solution:

Cronjob is a file that contains your job:

cat cronjob
* * * * * bash /path/to/script.sh >> /path/to/log.txt

Then you should set executable permission and start cron service:

chmod +x cronjob    
/etc/init.d/crond start  #redhat based servers like centos
/etc/init.d/cron  start  #debian based servers like ubuntu

After that you should tell cron service to run cronjob file: crontab cronjob

Your script should download a file.

If your script doesn't run you should run it from good path[full path], so your cronjob file would be something like this:

* * * * * /bin/bash /path/to/script.sh >> /path/to/log.txt