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JuCachalot
JuCachalot

Reputation: 1018

Using wget in a crontab to run a PHP script

I set up a cron job on my Ubuntu server. Basically, I just want this job to call a php page on an other server. This php page will then clean up some stuff in a database. So I tought it was a good idea to call this page with wget and then send the result to /dev/null because I don't care about the output of this page at all, I just want it to do its database cleaning job. So here is my crontab:

0 0 * * * /usr/bin/wget -q --post-data 'pass=mypassword' http://www.mywebsite.com/myscript.php > /dev/null 2>&1

(I post a password to make sure no one could run the script but me). It works like a charm except that wget writes each time an empty page in my user directory: the result of downloading the php page.

I don't understand why the result isn't send to /dev/null ? Any idea about the problem here? Thanks you very much!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 18093

Answers (3)

Augusto
Augusto

Reputation: 2242

you can mute wget output with the --quiet option

wget  --quiet    http://example.com

Upvotes: 1

Konerak
Konerak

Reputation: 39773

wget's output to STDOUT is it trying to make a connection, showing progress, etc.

If you don't want it to store the saved file, use the -O file parameter:

/usr/bin/wget -q --post-data -O /dev/null 'pass=mypassword' http://www.mywebsite.com/myscript.php > /dev/null 2>&1

Checkout the wget manpage. You'll also find the -q option for completely disabling output to STDOUT (but offcourse, redirecting the output as you do works too).

Upvotes: 10

Gryphius
Gryphius

Reputation: 79036

wget -O /dev/null ....

should do the trick

Upvotes: 5

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