pm2 doesnt work with crontab

keineAhnung123

Hello,

Im trying to restart my MM every day in the night so i want to use a crontab.

Might be easy:

sudo crontab -e

and add

59 23 * * * pm2 restart mm

But that doesnt work.
The crontab seems to work:

Feb 27 13:37:01 raspberrypi CRON[3581]: (root) CMD (pm2 restart mm)

And i did a pm2 flush before and after the crontab did its job there is nothing in the log:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ 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-error.log last 100 lines:
/home/pi/.pm2/logs/mm-out.log last 100 lines:
0|mm       | [27.02.2021 13:38.28.339] [INFO]  Newsfeed-Fetcher: Broadcasting 39 items.

so it seems that pm2 didnt do anything.

Next try after some online research:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ which node
/home/pi/.config/nvm/versions/node/v10.23.0/bin/node
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ which pm2
/home/pi/.config/nvm/versions/node/v10.23.0/bin/pm2

i changed the crontab to

1 14 * * * /home/pi/.config/nvm/versions/node/v10.23.0/bin/node /home/pi/.config/nvm/versions/node/v10.23.0/bin/pm2 restart mm

(1 14 is for testing)

It still doesnt work: no output in pm2 log.

Does anyone have an idea?

Thanks :)

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.