Cannot Import Python MySQL module when running a script using crontab

Question

I am using crontab to run a python script that requires the module MySQLdb. When I run this script from the command line everything works fine. However, trying to run it using crontab elicits this error.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "clickout.py", line 3, in <module>
    import MySQLdb
ImportError: No module named MySQLdb

I did a google search and added this to the top of my script #!/usr/bin/python. However, this didn't do anything and I am still getting the same error. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Define PYTHONPATH at the top of your crontab. Defining all these environment variables (below) can help you avoid some common cron problems relating to the lack of environment variables:

USER=...
HOME=/home/...
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:$HOME/bin
PYTHONPATH=...
DISPLAY=:0.0
MAILTO=...
LANG=en_US.UTF-8

---

To find out the path to MySQLdb, open a python shell and type:

>>> import MySQLdb
>>> MySQLdb.__file__
'/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/MySQLdb/__init__.pyc'

Your path my differ. In the example above, the appropriate dir to add to PYTHONPATH would be /usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7 (though you should not have to add this particular path since your python executable should have this path in its sys.path automatically).