Launching jar via sh script works normally but via crontab gives ClassFormatError

Question

Launching the jar via a java -cp command in an shell scrip eg: RunFileConverter.sh file on linux works without a problem. But, when I try to execute the script via 'crontab -e' it gives me a ClassFormatError.

The jar was compiled on Win7 with the Java 6 jdk (latest) and the java version on the (redhat) linux server is also JRE 6 (1.6.0_29).

owner of the files is pipe, and the crontab is launched via same user.

Contents of the RunFileConverter.sh:

java -cp /home/pipe/Custom/cbs/:/home/pipe/Custom/cbs/FileConverter.jar fileconverter.Launcher

Filestructure (/home/pipe/Custom/cbs/): lib/somelib.jar FileConverter.jar FileConverter.properties RunFileConverter.sh fileconverter.log

Stripped down Launching class file:

package fileconverter;

import java.io.*;
import java.util.Locale;
import java.util.ResourceBundle;
import java.util.logging.FileHandler;
import java.util.logging.Handler;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;

public class Launcher {

    // logger
    public final static Logger LOGGER = Logger.getLogger(FileConverter.LOGFILE);

    /**
     * Main class
     * @param args
     * @throws FileNotFoundException 
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException {

        // logger handlers, properties etc ...
        Handler fileHandler;
        // ...


        // create converters
        FileConverter requestConverter = new RequestFileConverter();
        FileConverter exportConverter = new ExportFileConverter();

        // start ya conversions, aarrr mate
        requestConverter.run();
        exportConverter.run();

    }
}

crontab-e

*/5 * * * * /home/pipe/Custom/cbs/RunFileConverter.sh

I have no idea what the error might be

Answer 1

Most likely cron does have different (older) version of java in path.

What does it say if you execute java -version via cron?