On freebsd with default settings getssl script doesn't work from cron

[vnv099]

I tried getssl script on 10.4-RELEASE-p13 FreeBSD. Just adding to crontab string like from readme - 23 5 * * * /root/scripts/getssl -u -a -q doesn't work, but from command line all working perfectly. It is something with PATH, that uses cron, because to solve this issue I had to make own script, set another PATH there and run it from crontab. Script is:

#!/usr/local/bin/bash
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/local/etc/rc.d
/usr/local/bin/getssl -w /etc/getssl -u -a

[wurtel2]

What error message did it give? I wouldn't be surprised if it couldn't find curl or openssl. Note that you can add a PATH=... line to your crontab, so that getssl doesn't need to be wrapped in another script.

[dawidi]

I think the relevant difference that makes it work with your script isn't the PATH, but that you've explicitly specified the working directory using -w /etc/getssl.

I just ran into a very similar issue while moving my getssl instance from cron to a systemd timer.

• When called from cron, getssl expected the domain-config subdirectories at /root/.getssl/example.com
• but when called from the timer, even with the correct WorkingDirectory=/root/.getssl/ in the .service file, it apparently expected to find them at /.getssl/example.com. Without hand-feeding getssl -w /root/.getssl it would just return successfully after having done nothing at all. Asking it to check only one specific domain finally allowed me to pinpoint where it was looking.