export .profile to crontab

[Mats Andersson_2]

Hi, I'm looking for information about how I can export a users .profile to the crontabfile to get the right env. when running a cron job. Man pages says
"Users who desire to have their .profile executed must explicitly do so in the crontab entry or in a script called by the entry."

But no example or syntax.

Thanks in advance.
/Mats A

[Steve Steel · Accepted solution]

Hi


In begin of script

. .profile


The . and space stops it forking and keeps details at this level


Steve Steel

[Fred Ruffet]

You can either run all jobs in root's crontab, using "su - user -c job" to ensure sourcing of user's profile, or write scripts that source profile and run comands and then put this jobs in user's cron.

Regards,

Fred

[Mark Grant]

It is usually better not to do this as users may edit the .profile themselves and fill it full of things that might break cron. Generally, people create another file that sets all the environment variables and they source that in their crontab with the following syntax

00 10 * * * . /home/myvariables && runscript

Notice the ".". This executes the file in the current shell so you don't need to export things though you can do if you want.

If you really want to source the .profile then change the path "/home/myvariables" to "/home/user/.profile"

[Mats Andersson_2]

Thank's everyboby for quick answers

/Mats A