Can't get cron.php to run using the commands

Question

Hi I was following this guide CiviCRM Page to try and get the mail scheduler to work for CiviMail. I tried doing HTTP Request and WP-CLI methods, but both had issues.

For WP-CLI, I used: wp --user=username --url=https://URL --path=/homepages/.../htdocs/wordpress civicrm api job.execute auth=0 This just hung and didn't do anything.

For HTTP: I used: wget -O - -q -t 1 'https://url/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/bin/cron.php ?name=username&pass=password&key=key'. This didn't hang, but also didn't return or do anything. When I tried to put the url in the browser, it returned and Error 500 after a lot of time trying to load.

I am using IONOS as my hosting for Wordpress and am using CiviCRM 5.65.1.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

One thought is that the you are not running the cli version of php on the command line. Different hosts have different settings, and I don't know IONOS.

I use the following to be sure I get the php cli version I need:

/usr/bin/php8.1 /usr/local/bin/wp --user=civicron --url=https://example.corg --path=/home/example/public_html --timezone=America/New_York cv api job.execute auth=0

I can usually find if the cli version by trying at the command line:

which php

and

wp --info

The latter command should show the same version of php in the which php command and will have a section like this:

PHP binary: /usr/bin/php8.1
PHP version:    8.1.23
php.ini used:   /etc/php/8.1/cli/php.ini

On my system I can clearly see from the ini file that it's the CLI version.

on a cPanel server I get:

PHP binary: /opt/cpanel/ea-php81/root/usr/bin/php
PHP version:    8.1.22
php.ini used:   /opt/cpanel/ea-php81/root/etc/php.ini

Often cron will not respect the path which is why I tend to explicitly call the script with /usr/bin/php /usr/local/bin/wp as opposed to just wp.

If you have any doubts, ask IONOS for the full path to the command line version of php.