Schedule a Rscript crontab everyminute

Question

For some reason my R script will not run with a crontab. I have it for every minute right now for testing, but will change it once it works.

Any ideas?

* * * * * Rscript “/Users/Home/Desktop/David Studios/Scraper/compiler.R”

Also, this was working as just a normal command in Terminal.

Asaph · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-04T23:48:00.890

9

I can see the dreaded smart quotes in your cron entry. This often happens when you copy-paste from word processors. Backspace over those abominations and re-type normal quotes. Change:

* * * * * Rscript “/Users/Home/Desktop/David Studios/Scraper/compiler.R”

to

* * * * * Rscript "/Users/Home/Desktop/David Studios/Scraper/compiler.R"

See the difference? It's subtle and easy to miss.

Update:

I see you've made the above change and it's still not working for you. Verify that Rscript is in the $PATH environment variable for the user that owns this crontab. Alternatively, you can simply specify the fully qualified path to Rscript directly in the cron entry. You can find that quickly on the command line with the following command:

which Rscript

Update #2:

I see by your comments that the fully qualified path to Rscript is /usr/local/bin/Rscript. I'm guessing /usr/local/bin is not in the path for the user who owns this crontab. Try using the fully qualified path, like this:

* * * * * /usr/local/bin/Rscript "/Users/Home/Desktop/David Studios/Scraper/compiler.R"

edited Aug 04 '16 at 23:48

answered Aug 04 '16 at 23:09

Asaph

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I've made that update, but still no dice.. any other ideas? – frameworkgeek Aug 04 '16 at 23:13
Is `Rscript` in the path for the user that owns this crontab? If you specify the fully qualified path to `Rscript`, does it work? – Asaph Aug 04 '16 at 23:14
I think that's where I'm stuck. I've re-installed R but I don't think that worked. Is there a way to declare the path in the command? – frameworkgeek Aug 04 '16 at 23:25
it is /usr/local/bin/Rscript – frameworkgeek Aug 04 '16 at 23:43
1

Ok, so try changing your crontab entry to `* * * * * /usr/local/bin/Rscript "/Users/Home/Desktop/David Studios/Scraper/compiler.R"` – Asaph Aug 04 '16 at 23:45
Still nothing. Should I move this to chat? – frameworkgeek Aug 05 '16 at 00:07
@frameworkgeek, did you ever resolve this? I have the same issue. – nateroe Nov 04 '21 at 09:18
So, in your script.R file, add #!/bin/bash to the top of the script, then in your crontab write the following : * * * * * /usr/local/bin/Rscript /Users/path/to/file/script.R (there is a space after Rscript) then, run chmod +x script.R in the folder where your script is located – Justin Mahoney Oct 25 '22 at 00:00

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 06 '18 at 06:36

Check that you are really running crontab deamon. You should get a number as return, which is the process id for crontab.

pgrep cron

Make sure your R file is execuable:

sudo chmod +x [yourfile.R]

Add the shebang line in your R file:

#!/usr/local/bin/Rscript

Let crontab do the change of directory:

* * * * * cd /Users/Home/Desktop/David Studios/Scraper/ && /usr/local/bin/Rscript compiler.R

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 26 '19 at 23:31

2

You might have a problem with the working directories in R.

When you run the script from the terminal you might be in the directory where the files the script needs are, but when the script runs with cron it uses another directory.

Use the setwd() function inside the R script or use absolute paths when accesing files to make sure the script works no matter where it is being used.

answered Oct 26 '19 at 23:31

victor torres

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seems like a reasonable guess. This three year old question is actually too broad to answer definitely - invites discussions and guesses from what I can tell. – Brett Caswell Oct 27 '19 at 02:15

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 08 '22 at 14:25

I just spent several hours on a similar problem. I'm still not completely sure what was wrong, but the following command finally worked and I don't really care why. Hopefully this can help someone else.

* * * * * /usr/local/bin/Rscript -e 'source("/home/rstudio/git/myproject/inst/please_work.R")'

Schedule a Rscript crontab everyminute

4 Answers4

Update:

Update #2:

Linked