This script runs a command just like cron would.
This is useful to debug a command that, when scheduled by cron, has unexpected behaviour.
cron does not run a script is the very same way as if you run it from a regular user console.
Indeed, cron runs it:
- with a modified environment
- with a specific shell, which may or may not be your usual shell
- without an attached input terminal
- in a non-interactive shell
This script tries hard to mimic this behaviour, so that it easily helps debugging cron scripts.
An alternative way of debugging would be to schedule your script with cron in the following minute, but that limits to one attempt per minute (and causes risking to forget to un-schedule the cron task).
This scipt stemmed from some Stack Overflow discussions.
Credits go to:
- daladim
- poleguy
- (and maybe others, check the merged pull requests)