How to specify in crontab by what user to run script

Question

I have few crontab jobs that run under root  but that gives me some problems  For example all folders created in process of that cron job are under user root and group root   How can i make it to run under user www-data and group www-data so when i run scripts from my website i can manipulate those folders and files   My server runs on Ubuntu  Current crontab job is       1         php5  var www web includes crontab queue process php  gt  gt   var www web includes crontab queue log 2 gt  amp 1

User · Answer

Since you re running Ubuntu  your system crontab is located at  etc crontab   As the root user  or using sudo   you can simply edit this file and specify the user that should run this command  Here is the format of entries in the system crontab and how you should enter your command     m h dom mon dow user  command   1         www-data php5  var www web includes crontab queue process php  gt  gt   var www web includes crontab queue log 2 gt  amp 1   Of course the permissions for your php script and your log file should be set so that the www-data user has access to them

User · Answer

EDIT  Note that this method won t work with crontab -e  but only works if you edit  etc crontab directly  Otherwise  you may get an error like  bin sh  www-data  command not found  Just before the program name     1         www-data php5  var www web includes crontab queue process php  gt  gt   var www web includes crontab queue log 2 gt  amp 1

User · Answer

You can also try using runuser  as root  to run a command as a different user    1         runuser php5               --command   var www web includes crontab queue process php                           gt  gt   var www web includes crontab queue log 2 gt  amp 1    See also  man runuser

User · Answer

Mike s suggestion sounds like the  right way   I came across this thread wanting to specify the user to run vncserver under on reboot and wanted to keep all my cron jobs in one place   I was getting the following error for the VNC cron   vncserver  The USER environment variable is not set  E g     In my case  I was able to use sudo to specify who to run the task as    reboot sudo -u  someone  vncserver

User · Answer

Instead of creating a crontab to run as the root user  create a crontab for the user that you want to run the script   In your case  crontab -u www-data -e will edit the crontab for the www-data user   Just put your full command in there and remove it from the root user s crontab

[ubuntu] How to specify in crontab by what user to run script?

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