cron on a docker container for laravel not working

Question

I have a container with for my laravel app with php:7.0.4-fpm as base image.

This is my dockerfile :

FROM php:7.0.4-fpm

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y cron nano libmcrypt-dev \
    mysql-client libmagickwand-dev --no-install-recommends \
    && pecl install imagick \
    && docker-php-ext-enable imagick \
    && docker-php-ext-install mcrypt pdo_mysql

COPY . /var/www

ADD crontab /etc/cron.d/laravel-cron

RUN chmod 0644 /etc/cron.d/laravel-cron

RUN touch /var/log/cron.log

RUN /usr/bin/crontab /etc/cron.d/laravel-cron

RUN cron

1. Cron is not running, I have to ssh in the container to launch it.

2. When I start it manually it works for som simple things like echoing a text every minute. But not for the php artisan schedule:run command. In the log I see :

   Running scheduled command: '/usr/local/bin/php' 'artisan' errors:insert > '/dev/null' 2>&1

errors:insert is the name of my task, but nothing is update in the website.

3. That's strange because when I run php artisan schedule:run command manually it works on the website.

So my question is : How to make cron work on a docker container to execute the php artisan schedule:run command ? Preferably written in a dockerfile and not manually via ssh.

I also have a strange message from the container :

ALERT: oops, unknown child (5094) exited with code 1.
Please open a   bug report (https://bugs.php.net).

Answer 1

An alternative solution could be by running php artisan schedule:run with supervisor. In my case I have a schedule-run.conf in [project root]/.docker/php/workers:

[program:schedule-run]
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
command=/bin/bash -c "while [ true ]; do (php /var/www/html/artisan 
schedule:run --verbose --no-interaction &); sleep 60; done"
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=root
numprocs=1
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/www/html/storage/logs/schedule.log
stopwaitsecs=60

• replace your apt-get install -y cron by apt-get install -y supervisor
• add ADD .docker/php/workers /etc/supervisor/conf.d and CMD ["/usr/bin/supervisord"] to your Dockerfile.

Answer 2

Though this is a late reply but I thought my solution might help others as I have faced this issue before.

I created separate docker container as Laravel Docker Cron for performing laravel schedules

Here my Dockerfile code

FROM ubuntu:latest
MAINTAINER [email protected]

ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive

# install base packages
RUN apt-get update && apt-get -y install cron\

    apt-utils \
    curl \

    # Install php 7.2
    php7.2 \
    php7.2-cli \
    php7.2-json \
    php7.2-curl \
    php7.2-fpm \
    php7.2-dev \
    php7.2-gd \
    php7.2-ldap \
    php7.2-mbstring \
    php7.2-bcmath \
    php7.2-mysql \
    php7.2-soap \
    php7.2-sqlite3 \
    php7.2-xml \
    php7.2-zip \
    php7.2-intl \
    libldap2-dev \
    libaio1 \
    libaio-dev

# Install tools
RUN apt-get -y install openssl \
    nano \
    ghostscript \
    iputils-ping \
    locales \
    rlwrap \
    php-pear \
    make \
    unzip \
    zip \
    tar \
    ca-certificates \
    && apt-get clean &&\

# Install composer
RUN curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

# Set locales
RUN locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 en_GB.UTF-8 de_DE.UTF-8 es_ES.UTF-8 fr_FR.UTF-8 it_IT.UTF-8 km_KH sv_SE.UTF-8 fi_FI.UTF-8

# Copy crontab file to the cron.d directory
COPY crontab /etc/cron.d/crontab

# Give execution rights on the cron job
RUN chmod 0644 /etc/cron.d/crontab

# Apply cron job
RUN crontab /etc/cron.d/crontab

# Create the log file to be able to run tail
RUN touch /var/log/cron.log

# Run the command on container startup
CMD cron && tail -f /var/log/cron.log

crontab file will contain

* * * * * cd /var/www && php artisan schedule:run >> /var/log/cron.log 2>&1
# An empty line is required at the end of this file for a valid cron file.

Here is repo for this code click here