Why is cron not executing my node.js script properly?

Question

I am trying to run a node.js script from cron. It is supposed to read a .json-File, make an API call and then write the response to a .json-File.

When executing manually everything works fine.

This does it's job

sudo node ~/bots/gtaa/index.js

sudo crontab -e

29 9 * * 1-5 /usr/bin/node ~/bots/gtaa/index.js >> ~/gtaa-bot.log 2>&1

grep cron /var/log/syslog

May 11 09:29:01 raspberrypi CRON[54381]: (root) CMD (/usr/bin/node ~/bots/gtaa/index.js >> ~/gtaa-bot.log 2>&1)

My index.js uses the local .env-File

require('dotenv').config({ path: __dirname + '/.env' })

There also is no gtaa-bot.log-File in the home directory.

A very similar question has been asked here but there are no useful answers provided.

Answer 1

Well I have experienced this issue, more recently using Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS

Ultimately what ends up happening is cron runs in a different environment and most likely is unable to find the correct path to node.

There are some ways to configure this, however I found a much easier solution ended up being to just have cron execute a bash script, that runs nvm and/or node.

For example, I have this setup to run every 20 minutes:

20 * * * * /bin/bash/ /home/user/nvm_cron.sh

And in my nvm_cron.sh file:

# Load nvm
export NVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.nvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm")"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"
nvm use 16.14.0

# Run node program
cd /home/user/folder && node start.js

Dont forget to make sure the nvm_cron.sh file is executable

This way I have control over the version of node that I want to run for the script, and don't have to worry about messing with cron.