pm2 doesnt work with crontab

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.

plainbroke

@chrisfr1976 said in pm2 doesnt work with crontab:

find / -iname pm2

/usr/local/bin/pm2
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/pm2
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/pm2/lib/templates/logrotate.d/pm2
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/pm2/pm2


/home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/.bin/pm2
/home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/pm2
/home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2
/home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/pm2/lib/templates/logrotate.d/pm2
/home/pi/MagicMirror/node_modules/pm2/pm2

Which is the true one and one to use?

chrisfr1976

@plainbroke
Then use this:
/usr/local/bin/pm2

plainbroke

@chrisfr1976
@sdetweil
Thank you both for the help.
/usr/local/bin/pm2 restart mm
worked so I set it up to stop now and if (fingers crossed) works.
I am golden.
Wonder why I never had to use the full path before?
Maybe my pm2 path was /home/pi/pm2 before.
Doesn’t really matter as long as it works, I am a happy camper.
It works.
Thank you so much… I will mark this solved.
Well I would if I could… strange.

By the way " which pm2 " shows the path that I needed to use in crontab -e

sdetweil

@plainbroke awesome

i should have remembered the path problem

plainbroke

@sdetweil
Did the new MM and or trixie change the way crontab works? Mine has stopped working since the update to 2.33. I tried again tonight and will see if the changes work or not… also my mm.json file quit working. Hind sight is 20/20 should have left well enough alone…

sdetweil

@plainbroke I do not know

Sorry, I have to ask, you DID use a new sd card, right?

What does /var/log/syslog say about the crontab execution

Did you use crontab -e
Or sudo crontab -e

1st is run as user who executed the crontab command
2nd is run as root

plainbroke

@sdetweil
Using NVMe disk 256gb smallest I had on hand. 3 of them are exhibiting the same issues. I did try going back to Bookworm and I am still getthing a blank screen after a while. I ran npm run config:check it says all is good in the config.js ////
I am currently reloading from scratch.
Which OS is better for the 2.33 MM? 32 or 64 bit?
Wondering if I was using 32 bit and now the 64 bit is messing with me… So dang many things can mess with these little devices.

I only use crontab -e, should I try sudo crontab -e