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

Instead of

0  *  *  *  *  sh /my/script.sh

Use bash -l -c

0  *  *  *  *  bash -l -c 'sh /my/script.sh'

Answer 2

Unfortunately, crontabs have a very limited environment variables scope, thus you need to export them every time the corntab runs.

An easy approach would be the following example, suppose you've your env vars in a file called env, then:

* * * * * . ./env && /path/to_your/command

this part . ./env will export them and then they're used within the same scope of your command

Answer 3

I got one more solution for this problem:

0 5 * * * . $HOME/.profile; /path/to/command/to/run

In this case it will pick all the environment variable defined in your $HOME/.profile file.

Of course $HOME is also not set, you have to replace it with the full path of your $HOME.

Answer 4

Expanding on @carestad example, which I find easier, is to run the script with cron and have the environment in the script.

In crontab -e file:

SHELL=/bin/bash

*/1 * * * * $HOME/cron_job.sh

In cron_job.sh file:

#!/bin/bash
source $HOME/.bash_profile
some_other_cmd

Any command after the source of .bash_profile will have your environment as if you logged in.

Answer 5

Expanding on @Robert Brisita has just expand , also if you don't want to set up all the variables of the profile in the script, you can select the variables to export on the top of the script

In crontab -e file:

SHELL=/bin/bash

*/1 * * * * /Path/to/script/script.sh

In script.sh

#!/bin/bash
export JAVA_HOME=/path/to/jdk

some-other-command