Cron job triggers error notice in ProcessWire.php

[Robin S]

I have a PHP file that bootstraps PW and I'm calling it from a cron job. When the cron fires the script does run but I also get the following error notice:

[01-May-2017 13:07:01 Pacific/Auckland] PHP Notice:  Undefined index: argc in /home/myaccount/public_html/wire/core/ProcessWire.php on line 260

I've seen this reply to a similar problem...

...but I'm not sure that applies in my case. My site is on a shared host and I get the error when I call my cron job like this...

php -q /home/myaccount/public_html/tm_import.php

...which is the recommended format according to my host's documentation. I tried this...

/usr/bin/php -q /home/myaccount/public_html/tm_import.php

...and I get the same notice. Whereas based on @BitPoet's suggestion when I try...

/usr/bin/php-cli -q /home/myaccount/public_html/tm_import.php

...my script doesn't run.

Incidentally, line 260 of ProcessWire.php checks if

php_sapi_name() == 'cli'

and in my case php_sapi_name() is 'cgi-fcgi'. So I'm wondering if PW should be checking for some other variants of php_sapi_name() and I should file a GitHub issue for this, or if I'm just doing something wrong in my cron job.

PHP 7.0, PW 3.0.55

[kixe]

3 hours ago, Robin S said:

So I'm wondering if PW should be checking for some other variants of php_sapi_name() and I should file a GitHub issue for this

I would say yes since php_sapi_name()  will return 'cgi' or 'cgi-fcgi' even if cgi is called from the command line.

Some other remarks:

• The content of $_SERVER differs depending on the call of php-cgi (server or command line)
• If register_argc_argv is disabled (php.ini) $_SERVER[argc] is not set. Could be checked with ini_get('register_argc_arg');

As far I can see the setting of $config->cli has not an effect inside PW.

[Robin S]

GitHub issue opened: https://github.com/processwire/processwire-issues/issues/255

Apparently it's quite easy to unknowingly call the php-cgi binary from a cron job on cPanel servers because the paths changed starting in EasyApache 4 (previously the /usr/bin/php path pointed to php-cli).