Getting cPanel cronjobs to work with Magento 1.9

I think your cron job calls stopped working correctly because starting from some 1.9.*.* version Magento added an additional block to the .htaccess to increase cron.php file security:

Code:

###########################################
## Deny access to cron.php
  <Files cron.php>

############################################
## uncomment next lines to enable cron access with base HTTP authorization
## http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/auth.html
##
## Warning: .htpasswd file should be placed somewhere not accessible from the web.
## This is so that folks cannot download the password file.
## For example, if your documents are served out of /usr/local/apache/htdocs
## you might want to put the password file(s) in /usr/local/apache/.

  #AuthName "Cron auth"
  #AuthUserFile ../.htpasswd
  #AuthType basic
  #Require valid-user

############################################

  Order allow,deny
  Deny from all

  </Files>

As you can see, by default it blocks access to cron.php from any IP address. I suggest to:

1. Determine the IP address which your web server 'sees' when your cron.php is called. Find it in Raw Access logs in cPanel.

2. Modify the .htaccess file to allow access to cron.php from that IP address, change the above block in .htaccess to:

Code:

###########################################
## Deny access to cron.php
  <Files cron.php>

############################################
## uncomment next lines to enable cron access with base HTTP authorization
## http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/auth.html
##
## Warning: .htpasswd file should be placed somewhere not accessible from the web.
## This is so that folks cannot download the password file.
## For example, if your documents are served out of /usr/local/apache/htdocs
## you might want to put the password file(s) in /usr/local/apache/.

  #AuthName "Cron auth"
  #AuthUserFile ../.htpasswd
  #AuthType basic
  #Require valid-user

############################################

    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 1.2.3.4

  </Files>

change 1.2.3.4 to the determined IP address from the Raw Access logs.

 

Also, I suggest to use this command in cPanel Cron Jobs to call Magento cron:

Code:

wget -O - -q 'http://www.yourdomain.com/cron.php'

change www.yourdomain.com to your Magento installation domain.