pm2 doesnt work with crontab

[sdetweil]

@keineahnung123 u need to run pm2 as the user that did the save and where mm was running. it cannot be root

you also create a user specific crontab in /var/spool/cron
user needs to own the file, then username is not required on the contab entries themselves

Each user, including root, can have a cron file. These files don't exist by default, but can be created in the /var/spool/cron directory using the crontab -e command that's also

[keineAhnung123]

@sdetweil Thanks.

With

sudo nano /etc/crontab

and

30 16   * * *   pi      /home/pi/.config/nvm/versions/node/v10.23.0/bin/node /home/pi/.config/nvm/versions/node/v10.23.0/bin/pm2 stop mm

it seems to work :)

[sdetweil]

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

[keineAhnung123]

@sdetweil

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?