docker-compose with crontab

Question

I recently have a problem when I want to execute docker-compose command in crontab.

I have a docker-compose YAML file that defined all the services I need, say “docker-compose.yml". And I also have a Makefile in which I had written some command to do something.

My makefile is:

.PHONY operate
operate:
    /usr/local/bin/docker-compose -p /project -f ~/docker-compose-production.yml run rails env

This make script worked fine when it executed in shell. It listed all the environment var I defined in docker-compose.yml. But when I putted it in crontab. The result became strange, it listed nothing but only the $PATH.

My crontab file is:

57 21 * * * make -f ~/Makefile operate  >~/temp 2>&1

I guess there must be some environment var that docker-compose must have but I don’t know. Do you have any idea about this problem?

Answer 1

You won't need any environment variables to drive Docker Compost that you aren't already using for Docker. Most of those are unneeded unless you are connecting to a remote Docker host.

What I suspect is that cron is executing as a different user with a different set of permissions that doesn't have access to the Docker socket. Maybe you can add a line to your Makefile in order to debug this. You can use the 'whoami' command to output the name of the current user.

Answer 2

I had an issue with a bash script with docker-compose exec command inside the script and this could be related to the problem.

The script was running fine when it was launched from the terminal but it was returning an error code when the script was launched by CRON.

I solved the issue by adding -T after docker-compose exec in the bash script :

docker-compose exec -T

–T Disable pseudo-tty allocation. By default docker-compose exec allocates a TTY.

Answer 3

for laravel you can try:

docker exec -i php php /var/www/html/artisan schedule:run

Answer 4

For me the problem was not having the path set correctly. Check that your PATH environment var in crontab is the same to that of your current user.

Answer 5

my solution in crontab:

*/1 * * * * /usr/local/bin/docker-compose -f /home/mypath/docker-compose.yml exec php ls >/dev/null 2>&1 

my command: ls

my service container: php

Answer 6

you can use

10 3 * * 0 /usr/local/bin/docker-compose -f /www/ilanni.com/docker-compose.yml start > /dev/null

Answer 7

I am running docker-compose on Windows 10 with WSL(Windows subsystem for linux) crontab. Note: Got Docker Desktop for Windows and WSK working flawlesly using https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/setting-up-docker-for-windows-and-wsl-to-work-flawlessly

Documenting how I got docker-compose commands to run, for anyone else who may run into the same issue.

# Setting environment for Docker
DOCKER_HOST=tcp://localhost:2375
# m h  dom mon dow   command
01 01 * * * cd /d/my_docker_proj_dir && /home/my_user/.local/bin/docker-compose  exec -d container bash  -c "full-path-to-command args" 1> /tmp/cron.log 2> /tmp/cron.log

Answer 8

With newer versions of docker, docker-compose got merged with main docker command, so I do this:

0 3 * * * /usr/bin/docker compose -f /home/nuc/docker/docker-compose.yaml exec containername command >/dev/null 2>&1