Where can I set environment variables that crontab will use?

Question

I have a crontab running every hour. The user running it has environment variabless in the .bash_profile that work when the user runs the job from the terminal,

Answer 1

You can also prepend your command with env to inject Environment variables like so:

0 * * * *   env VARIABLE=VALUE /usr/bin/mycommand

Answer 2

• Set Globally env

sudo sh -c "echo MY_GLOBAL_ENV_TO_MY_CURRENT_DIR=$(pwd)" >> /etc/environment"

• Add scheduled job to start a script

crontab -e

  */5 * * * * sh -c "$MY_GLOBAL_ENV_TO_MY_CURRENT_DIR/start.sh"

=)

Answer 3

For me I had to specify path in my NodeJS file.

// did not work!!!!!
require('dotenv').config()

instead

// DID WORK!!
require('dotenv').config({ path: '/full/custom/path/to/your/.env' })

Answer 4

Setting vars in /etc/environment also worked for me in Ubuntu. As of 12.04, variables in /etc/environment are loaded for cron.

Answer 5

If you start the scripts you are executing through cron with:

#!/bin/bash -l

They should pick up your ~/.bash_profile environment variables

Answer 6

I'm using Oh-my-zsh in my macbook so I've tried many things to get the crontab task runs but finally, my solution was prepending the .zshrc before the command to run.

*/30 * * * * . $HOME/.zshrc; node /path/for/my_script.js

This task runs every 30 minutes and uses .zshrc profile to execute my node command.

Don't forget to use the dot before the $HOME var.