Configuring cron using PHP cli method results in Permission denied

Question

Centos 7 with selinux set to permissive. Using apache as the user and confirmed apache has execute permissions to the folder and file in plugins/civicrm/civicrm/bin/cli.php

The crontab entry -

1 * * * * apache /etc/php.ini var/www/domainfolder/public_html/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/bin/cli.php -s domain.com -u wpuser-cron -p wordpresspasswordhere -e Job -a execute

The error generated is -

X-Cron-Env: <SHELL=/bin/bash>
X-Cron-Env: <PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin>
X-Cron-Env: <MAILTO=root>
X-Cron-Env: <HOME=/usr/share/httpd>
X-Cron-Env: <LOGNAME=apache>
X-Cron-Env: <USER=apache>
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2016 15:01:01 -0400 (EDT)
Status: RO

/bin/bash: /etc/php.ini: Permission denied

Running it as the user apache definitely seems wrong. I did so just to see that I could get the cron job running properly; then revisit selinux settings to deal with creating a group with the correct permissions and a cron user for this job.

Answer 1

This cron job calls /etc/php.ini as the command, but that file is not an executable (it's the default configuration file for PHP).

(The "Permission denied" error is the same as if you asked "run the script README.TXT" - the file doesn't have exec bit set because it's not a program at all.)

Try this -

1 * * * * apache /usr/bin/php /var/www/example.org/public_html/wp-content/plugins/civicrm/civicrm/bin/cli.php -s domain.com -u wpuser-cron -p wordpresspasswordhere -e Job -a execute

Your PHP path may not actually be /usr/bin/php, so check the correct path by typing which php at a commandline and use that.

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Running it as the user apache definitely seems wrong.

This is OK. It means that CiviCRM when executed from cron and from the web will generate files using the same user - CiviCRM can have issues when it hits file access issues between multiple users, so using a single user for both www and cron is the simplest solution.