Cron and virtualenv

Running source from a cronfile won't work as cron uses /bin/sh as its default shell, which doesn't support source. You need to set the SHELL environment variable to be /bin/bash:

SHELL=/bin/bash
*/10 * * * * root source /path/to/virtualenv/bin/activate && /path/to/build/manage.py some_command > /dev/null

It's tricky to spot why this fails as /var/log/syslog doesn't log the error details. Best to alias yourself to root so you get emailed with any cron errors. Simply add yourself to /etc/aliases and run sendmail -bi.

More info here: http://codeinthehole.com/archives/43-Running-django-cronjobs-within-a-virtualenv.html

the link above is changed to: https://codeinthehole.com/tips/running-django-cronjobs-within-a-virtualenv/

The only correct way to run python cron jobs when using a virtualenv is to activate the environment and then execute the environment's python to run your code.

One way to do this is use virtualenv's activate_this in your python script, see: http://virtualenv.readthedocs.org/en/latest/userguide.html#using-virtualenv-without-bin-python

Another solution is echoing the complete command including activating the environment and piping it into /bin/bash. Consider this for your /etc/crontab:

***** root echo 'source /env/bin/activate; python /your/script' | /bin/bash

Don't look any further:

0 3 * * * /usr/bin/env bash -c 'cd /home/user/project && source /home/user/project/env/bin/activate && ./manage.py command arg' > /dev/null 2>&1

Generic approach:

* * * * * /usr/bin/env bash -c 'YOUR_COMMAND_HERE' > /dev/null 2>&1

The beauty about this is you DO NOT need to change the SHELL variable for crontab from sh to bash

You should be able to do this by using the python in your virtual environment:

/home/my/virtual/bin/python /home/my/project/manage.py command arg

EDIT: If your django project isn't in the PYTHONPATH, then you'll need to switch to the right directory:

cd /home/my/project && /home/my/virtual/bin/python ...

You can also try to log the failure from cron:

cd /home/my/project && /home/my/virtual/bin/python /home/my/project/manage.py > /tmp/cronlog.txt 2>&1

Another thing to try is to make the same change in your manage.py script at the very top:

#!/home/my/virtual/bin/python