pm2 doesnt work with crontab

sdetweil

@keineahnung123 i don’t think u need those paths now

keineAhnung123

45 16   * * *   pi      pm2 stop mm

doesnt work. I have to set the paths.

I think there went something wrong when i upgraded to buster.
I had a shellscript with

cd ~/MagicMirror && npm start

which worked fine and after the upgrade to buster i have to use

cd ~/MagicMirror && /home/pi/.config/nvm/versions/node/v10.23.0/bin/npm start

otherwise it says “npm: not found”

Same seems to be with crontab…

sdetweil

@keineahnung123 looks like u need to reinstall nvm

keineAhnung123

@sdetweil said in pm2 doesnt work with crontab:

@keineahnung123 looks like u need to reinstall nvm

nvm or npm?

sdetweil

@keineahnung123 nvm

Assassins

@keineahnung123
Hello, i Can send you a script om monday, where you make backup to a small .img and where is restart you MagicMirror on the same time.

plainbroke

@Assassins
I would like to see this script. Please.

plainbroke

This is all I use in my crontab -e
15 07 * * * pm2 start mm
30 21 * * * pm2 stop all
Shuts MM down at 9:30 pm
Starts MM backup at 7:15 am
EVERYDAY.
I have a Black background color and the bar at the bottom using black background which makes it look like the screen is off basically.
That way it doesn’t flood the room with light at night.
Also less read / writes to the ssd drive I use for my MM.

plainbroke

@sdetweil
My old crontab does not work in debian 12 aka bookworm
Is there something i need to add to it to get it to work again?
Really liked how it worked and the fact that I was getting a fresh restart of mm every morning…

15 07 * * * pm2 start mm
30 21 * * * pm2 stop all

Tried this too.

15 07 * * * pi  pm2 start mm
30 21 * * * pi  pm2 stop all

sdetweil

@plainbroke what userid did the pm2 jobs get created under?

plainbroke

@sdetweil
pi is my user. I know not very original or safe but it is on a closed network.
that is why I tried the pi user in the crontab.
and it shows up when I do crontab -l.
So I think it is setup under pi correctly.
Do I need to do it as root sudo crontab -e and use pi or root as the user?

sdetweil

@plainbroke no. what fo the pm2 logs show?

pm2 logs --lines=xxx
xxx is number of most recent lines, default 15

karsten13

@plainbroke

you can do cron restart with pm2 too, see https://pm2.keymetrics.io/docs/usage/restart-strategies/

plainbroke

This post is deleted!

sdetweil

@plainbroke i mean after cron trying to start
pm2

set a cron entry for an hour from now stop MagicMirror and flush the logs

pm2 stop all
pm2 flush

see what the logs say then

sdetweil

@karsten13 yes, but he wants stop and start

plainbroke

@sdetweil
Got ya, I miss understood before.
Running and waiting for results now…

Finally got results useing the proper path.
@sdetweil
You can mark this resolved.

sdetweil

@plainbroke how long til it might trigger?

plainbroke

@sdetweil
From that post about an hour. and it was supposed to trigger this morning around 6:30 am.
It did not and it did not leave anything in the logs since last night when I pm2 stop all then pm2 flush. around 8:30 pm .
So that means cron job did nothing with pm2 over night
I have been experimenting so there are a couple different job lines.
I really expected something in the log. But this is all I get.

pi@MM:~ $ pm2 logs --lines=100
[TAILING] Tailing last 100 lines for [all] processes (change the value with --lines option)
/home/pi/.pm2/pm2.log last 100 lines:
/home/pi/.pm2/logs/mm-out.log last 100 lines:
/home/pi/.pm2/logs/mm-error.log last 100 lines:

My Crontab on 2 different MM setups. I get the same nothing on both.
Both are running Bookworm and MM 2.3.1

05 20 * * * pi /usr/local/bin/pm2 start mm
15 07 * * * pi pm2 start mm
30 21 * * * pi pm2 stop mm
05 20 * * * root /usr/local/bin/pm2 start mm
15 07 * * * root pm2 start mm
30 21 * * * root pm2 stop mm

chrisfr1976

@plainbroke

Hi,

try this:

crontab -e with connected user:

05 20 * * * /usr/bin/pm2 start mm
15 07 * * * /usr/bin/pm2 start mm
30 21 * * * /usr/bin/pm2 stop mm

sudo crontab -e is not necessary.
I do not understand the start at 20:05 (first line)
my pm2 is in /usr/bin
always use full path in crontab

If you’re not sure where PM2 is you can use find / -iname pm2 in the console. Important is the full path in crontab.
/home/chris/.nvm/versions/node/v22.9.0/lib/node_modules/pm2/pm2 would be an alternative for me.