Perl script works but not via CRON

Question

I have a perl script (which syncs delicious to wp) which:

1. runs via the shell but
2. does not run via cron (and i dont get an error)

The o

Answer 1

The difference between a cron job and a job run from the shell is 'environment'. The primary difference is that your profile and the like are not run for a cron job, so any environment variables you have set in your normal shell environment are not set the same in the cron environment - no extensions to PATH, no environment variables identifying where Delicious and/or WP are hosted, etc.

Suggestion: create a cron job that simply reports the environment to a known file:

env > /home/27632/tmp/env.27632

Then see what is set in your own shell environment in comparison. Chances are, that will reveal the trouble.

Failing that, other environmental differences are that a cron job has no terminal, and has /dev/null for input and output - so interactive stuff does not work well.