Ndtyjky

I have a strange problem with a Django management command I am running via cron.

I've a production server set up to use Mailgun. I've a management command that simply sends an email:

from django.core.mail import send_mail



class Command(BaseCommand):

    help = 'Send email'



    def handle(self, *args, **options):

        send_mail('Test email', 'Test content', 'noreply@example.com', ['me@example.com',], fail_silently=False)

This script works perfectly if I run it via the command line (I'm using virtualenvwrapper):

> workon myapp

> python manage.py do_command

or directly:

> /home/user/.venvs/project/bin/python /home/user/project/manage.py do_command

But when I set it up with cron (crontab -e):

*/1 * * * * /home/user/.venvs/project/bin/python /home/user/project/manage.py do_command

The script runs (without error), but the email isn't sent.

What could be going on?

OK, the issue was that the wrong DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE env var was set and there were a few things throwing me off the scent:

My manage.py script defaults to the "development" version of my settings: settings.local and this uses the command line email backend. Cron suppresses all output so I wasn't seeing that happening.

Secondly, I was testing in a shell that already has DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE set to settings.production, so it appeared that the script ran correctly when I ran it on the command line.

The fix is easy, add DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE to the crontab:

DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=config.settings.production

*/1 * * * * ...