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Im running Lubuntu in a VM and trying to setup a script that runs every minute to check if the VPN is active, if not it turns everything off and on again. When i run the script manually everything works as intended, but when setup as a cronjob it fails at almost every turn.

First is that it cannot detect the routing table. When run manually it can see the tunnel but when run as a cron it fails and trys to quit everything.

The second is that it cannot execute the additional scripts/programs setup. It gets to the point of 'starting vpn' and then just quits, any output always stops here, but only as a cron, run manually it starts the vpn program.

I also cant seem to get the output to redirect to a file unless i append each echo statement with >>/home/localuser1/aqlog.txt. Adding that to the cron command does nothing.

#!/bin/bash
PATH=/home/localuser1/bin:/home/localuser1/.local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/db/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/bin

echo "-----------------------------------Script started  $(date)"

echo "Check VPN"
if [route | grep tun0 -c ]; then
    echo "VPN running, check qbit"
    if [pgrep qbit ]; then
        echo "All active, no action needed"
    else
        echo "Not active, starting qbit"
        nohup /usr/bin/qbittorrent >/dev/null &
    fi
else
    echo "no VPN, killing all"
    pkill qbit
    pkill pia
    sleep 2
    echo "Starting VPN"
    nohup /home/localuser1/.pia_manager/pia_manager/run.sh >/dev/null &
    echo "Waiting for VPN to start" 
    sleep 15
    echo "Check VPN active"
    if [route | grep tun0 -c]; then
        echo "VPN active, starting qbit"
        nohup /usr/bin/qbittorrent >/dev/null &
    else
        echo "No VPN, end of script"
        fi
fi
echo "Exiting script"

I also have the following setup in crontab, where autoquit.sh is the arbitrary name of the script above:

# m h  dom mon dow   command
* * * * * /home/localuser1/autoquit.sh
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    Don't put brackets [...] around commands if you don't understand what they're supposed to do. In particular, I doubt "everything works" when you're running this manually. Commented May 30, 2017 at 5:30
  • Thanks for the condescending comment that offered no real help. While i do understand the commands that i put inside of them from reading the man pages while i was building this, the brackets portion is simply the formatting i came across on dozens of sites when looking up the if-then-else format in bash. Im familiar with other programming languages that have parenthesis in the same place and based on the broad use of them on tutorial pages i assumed they were a format of the if function. If you want to actually be helpful and tell me WHY no brackets, that would be great. Commented May 30, 2017 at 16:47
  • You asked how to fix it, preferably by copying & pasting, not why it doesn't work. shrug [ is an alias for test. Consequently, (1) [ should always be followed by a space (you don't happen to have a command named [route, do you), and (2) if works by checking the exit code of the test command. Try this: if echo foo | grep -q foo; then echo found foo; fi. Which in turn works because the exit code of echo foo | grep -q foo is the exit code of grep. Commented May 30, 2017 at 21:03

1 Answer 1

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Well, thanks to a helpful user on Reddit i was able to figure it out so i thought id post here in case anyone runs into the same obstacle. The problem is that i was trying to start a GUI program through cron, which does not have ENV var passed through, meaning it had no way of knowing where to display. As soon as i added DISPLAY=:0 via this helpful forum it worked exactly as intended and now starts the programs.

Fixed code below:

#!/bin/bash
PATH=/home/localuser1/bin:/home/localuser1/.local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/db/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/bin

echo "-----------------------------------Script started  $(date)" >>/home/localuser1/aqlog.txt

echo "Checking VPN status" >>/home/localuser1/aqlog.txt
vpnstatus="$(route | grep tun0 -c)"
if [ "$vpnstatus" -gt "0" ]; then
    echo "VPN is running, checking qbit" >>/home/localuser1/aqlog.txt
    qbitstatus="$(pgrep qbit)"
    if [ -n "$qbitstatus" ]; then
        echo "All active, no action needed" >>/home/localuser1/aqlog.txt
    else
        echo "Not active, starting qbit" >>/home/localuser1/aqlog.txt
        nohup qbittorrent >/dev/null &
    fi
else
    echo "no VPN, killing all" >>/home/localuser1/aqlog.txt
    pkill qbit
    pkill pia
    sleep 2
    echo "Starting VPN" >>/home/localuser1/aqlog.txt
    nohup /home/localuser1/.pia_manager/pia_manager/run.sh >/dev/null &
    echo "Waiting for VPN to start"  >>/home/localuser1/aqlog.txt
    sleep 15
    echo "Checking if VPN is active" >>/home/localuser1/aqlog.txt
    vpnstatustwo="$(route | grep tun0 -c)"
    if [ "$vpnstatustwo" -gt "0" ]; then
        echo "VPN is active, starting qbit" >>/home/localuser1/aqlog.txt
        nohup qbittorrent >/dev/null &
    else
        echo "No VPN, end of script" >>/home/localuser1/aqlog.txt
    fi
fi
echo "Exiting script" >>/home/localuser1/aqlog.txt

Fixed cron job:

# m h  dom mon dow   command
* * * * * export DISPLAY=:0 && /home/localuser1/autoquit.sh >> /home/localuser1/script_output.txt 2>&1
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