How do i execute this cron job from a mac?

Question

I have a bash script that I can execute with cd ~/Documents/Code/shhh/ && ./testy if i'm in any directory on my computer and that successfully pushes to github which is what i want.

I'm trying to schedule a cron job to do this daily so I ran crontab -e which opens a nano editor and then I put 30 20 * * * cd ~/Documents/Code/shhh/ && ./testy to run daily at 10:30pm and hit control O, enter and control X. But still it it didn't execute. When I type crontab -l it shows my command & I have a You have new mail. message when I open a new window. Still my command doesn't execute even though it will when I run it from any other directory.

I think my crontab job is at /var/at/tmp so I ran 30 20 * * * cd ../../../Users/squirrel/Documents/Code/shhh/ && ./testy but still nothing, even though it does work when I write it out myself from that directory. Sidenote, I can't enter into the tmp folder even after using sudo

OK When I type in mail I see a lot message and inside i get this error

---------------Checking Status of 2--------------- [master 0c1fff8] hardyharhar 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) fatal: could not read Username for 'https://github.com': Device not configured

Answer 1

When you by default open nano Input_file it opens it up in INSERT mode(unlike vi where we have to explicitly go to INSERT mode by pressing i key). Now when you have done CTNRL+O it will then ask you if you want to save changes to opened file or not eg--> File Name to Write: Input_file If you press ENTER then it will save it and will be back on the screen(to your Input_file) where you entered new line. Now you could press CONTRL+X to come out of Input_file. May be you are stuck after saving it and want to come out then try this out once?

Answer 2

crontab -e does not edit the crontab file "live" at all -- changes are saved to the active file only after you save changes and exit the editor.

It also sounds like you may be using incorrect directory paths. The command in a crontab entry will generally be executed starting from the user's home directory. So if your home directory is /Users/squirrl, the command cd ../parent_directory/ will try to move to /Users/parent_directory. I suspect this is not what you want.

Finally, note that cron jobs run with a very minimal environment, without running most of your usual shell setup files (eg .bashrc). Most notably, if your script uses any commands that aren't in /bin or /usr/bin, you'll either need to use explicit full paths to them, or change the PATH variable to include the directories they're in.