Cron force unzip file

Question

I have the following cron

echo "*** Get the new ZIP  file ***"
/usr/bin/wget -t inf -nH  -N -c --progress=dot --reject=zip --mirror --timestamping --timeout=60 --waitretry=60  --no-passive-ftp  --directory-prefix=/var/www/vhosts/mydir --ftp-user=xxx --ftp-password=xxx ftp://xxx.xxx.be/xxx.zip 

echo "*** Cool now unzip the file please.  ***"
unzip -o /var/www/vhosts/mydir/xxx.zip 

everything works perfect from terminal However if i make a cron job out of it the zip file gets downloaded but i can't seem to unzip the file and i get the following error's

*** Start *** Cool now unzip the file please.  ***
Archive:  /var/www/vhosts/mydir/xxx.zip
checkdir error:  cannot create 012
                unable to process 012/.
checkdir error:  cannot create 025
                unable to process 025/.
checkdir error:  cannot create 027
                unable to process 027/.
checkdir error:  cannot create 031
                unable to process 031/. 
checkdir error:  cannot create 031
                unable to process 031/xxx/xx.jpg.
checkdir error:  cannot create 031
                unable to process 031/xxx/xx.jpg.
checkdir error:  cannot create 053
                unable to process 053/xxx/xx.jpg.
checkdir error:  cannot create 053
                unable to process 053/xxx/xx.jpg.

Is there a way i can force to create directory or overwrite existing files?

Answer 1

If you are getting permission problems, then you need to run the cron job as a user that has permissions to read and write in that directory. For example you could run the cron job as root.

There are at least two ways to run a cron job as root. In the first you can log in as root on the command line and then edit the root crontab with the command crontab -e Then paste the script you are running in there like this

00 00 * * * /opt/myscript/myscript.sh

The second way is to create a crontab file here /etc/cron.d/myscript with contents like this

root 00 00 * * * /opt/myscript/myscript.sh

Notice if you do it this way you have to prepend the user that will run the command.

Rather than running as root it would be better to choose a less powerful user and give them permissions to read and write in /var/www/vhosts/mydir. Lets say you want to do this with user bob. Issue the following commands to give bob ownership and read/write permission.

chown -R bob /var/www/vhosts/mydir
chmod -R o+rw /var/www/vhosts/mydir

Answer 2

Check that the $PATH is the same for both 'crontab' and the terminal. (If not, change it).