How to get NGINX to restart/reload from a cron job?

Question

I am trying to restart the NGINX service from a script which is called via a cron job (it works when run in the command line by the root user) - I am not sure if this is relevant but the cron job in question is also created via a script. I have tried multiple commands but the current one that I am using is the below:

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart

Any help on this would be great!

UPDATE

Below is the script that the cron runs and tries to reload the nginx service

#!/bin/bash

NGINX_CONFIG='/etc/nginx/sites-available'
NGINX_SITES_ENABLED='/etc/nginx/sites-enabled'
WEB_DIR='/var/www/vhosts/demos'

EMAIL=$1
DOMAIN=$2
SITE_DIR=$3

echo $DOMAIN
echo $SITE_DIR

# Remove the nginx configurtations
rm -Rf $NGINX_CONFIG/$DOMAIN.conf
rm -Rf $NGINX_SITES_ENABLED/$DOMAIN.conf

# Remove the access log
rm -Rf /var/log/nginx/$SITE_DIR.access.log

# Remove unicorn socket log
rm -Rf /tmp/unicorn.$SITE_DIR.sock

# Remove the DB
sudo psql -U postgres -c "SELECT pg_terminate_backend(pg_stat_activity.pid) FROM pg_stat_activity     WHERE pg_stat_activity.datname = '_$SITE_DIR' AND pid <> pg_backend_pid();"
dropdb -U postgres $SITE_DIR

# Remove the sites application from the server
rm -Rf $WEB_DIR/$SITE_DIR/

if [[ ! "$(/sbin/service nginx status)" =~ "start/running" ]]
then
   /etc/init.d/nginx reload
fi

Answer 1

You need make a cron job like root user, so, add new cron job, log as root user, with su and then run crontab -e and add it,

0 * * * * /etc/init.d/nginx reload

Or edit your

/etc/crontab

with your root user and add the cron

0 * * * * root /etc/init.d/nginx reload

(adjust the schedule as needed; the above will run every hour on the hour)

You cant run a cron with sudo (I think). You need to log on as root or edit crontab as root and add your comand.

Update**************+++

Why don't you run only

/etc/init.d/nginx reload

Instead of:

if [[ ! "$(/sbin/service nginx status)" =~ "start/running" ]]
then
   /etc/init.d/nginx reload
fi

Or, better, try this:

/etc/init.d/nginx status > /dev/null 
status="$?"
if [ $status  -eq "0" ]; then
    /etc/init.d/nginx reload
fi

There you can add a else if nginx is stoped to restart it or something like that... forme working I use it on my lite monitoring script http://kb.skamasle.com/2013/monitorear-servicios-ftp-mysql-apache-etc-y-levantar-si-esta-caido/

---

In any case we also can use this:

* * * * * /usr/bin/pgrep nginx > /dev/null || /etc/init.d/nginx restart >> /var/log/messages

One liner cron than just check if nginx pid is there if not restart it