Okay, this is probably a silly thing to get stuck on, but I’ve been trying to set up a simple script on my home server to automate some file backups. I keep hitting a wall with the permissions, and I can’t figure out why it runs fine when I execute it manually but just silently fails when the cron job tries to do it. I’m wondering if the issue is with the environment or the user context when it’s triggered automatically. Has anyone else run into something like this?
That moment when a script runs at home for you but not in cron is a bite of reality showing how permissions rule your day
Cron runs in a separate environment so PATH and HOME differ and the user may lack access to the folders the script needs
If the script touches a folder inside your home it may fail under cron because that home is not the same for the cron user
Could you compare which user cron runs as and which group and see if the script has permission to reach the necessary paths?
Maybe rethink permissions as a map of access rather than a gate for this single job and consider isolating the backup into a controlled environment
Some log digging into the cron mail or system logs might reveal the silent failure without guessing the cause