cron will find certain commands on the PATH but not others

Question

Having issues making crontab run certain commands, despite the PATH and SHELL being set correctly.

Here is the env of the machine:

SHELL=/bin/bash
USER=ubuntu
MAIL=/var/mail/ubuntu
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/gopath/bin

Here is the env of cron (looks the same):

SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/gopath/bin
PWD=/home/ubuntu

Then, in the crontab:

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/gopath/bin
SHELL=/bin/bash
*/1 * * * * "whoami"
*/1 * * * * "whoami && which whoami"

The first whoami task succeeds, but the second fails with:

/bin/bash: whoami && which whoami: command not found

because which is not found. However, this is quite strange as:

$ which whoami
/usr/bin/whoami

$ which which
/usr/bin/which

And /usr/bin is on the PATH in cron. What gives?

Answer 1

You shouldn't quote the cron job.

You have

*/1 * * * * "whoami && which whoami"

Which is looking a command literally called whoami && which whoami. Such as /usr/bin/whoami && which whoami. Obviously, this command does not exist. Remove the quotes so that the command is properly interpreted:

*/1 * * * * whoami && which whoami

Answer 2

Generally speaking, if you want to run multiple commands in a single cron task, you really should put them in a script.

You shouldn't be placing double-quotes around your statement like that. It's likely to be treated as a literal. If you are truly intent on running them inline, you can do something like the following: bash -c 'whoami && which whoami'

But again, at that point you should really be placing your commands in a shell script.