Crontab on a Mac

Sometimes you need to run python scripts on a schedule. In our clients case, they wanted several scripts to be run on a Mac every 5 minutes while one of their servers was being worked on. The scripts were responsible for calling a NetSuite RESTlet, extracting JSON formatted data from multiple Saved Searches, then posting the results to Datadog. This provides them with complete visibility to how their business process and associated systems are performing.

What I thought would be a simple task turned out to take longer than expected. As it turns out, you need to provide Cron with Full Disk Access on a Mac (OS 12.5) for the python scripts to run. This is not a full lesson using Crontab. Just a quick note on how to get past a common blocker on a Mac.

Here’s how to do that:

1. Navigate to:

   1. System Preferences

   2. Security & Privacy

   3. Privacy

   4. Full Disk Access

2. Add Cron: located in: /usr/sbin/cron

CAUTION: This is not a secure solution and should only be used as a temporary quick-fix.

Security & Privacy (Mac OS 12.5)

Once added, you should be able to install a new cron job using crontab -e

The contents of our crontab looked similar to this at the end:

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/python3 /Users/clientsUserName/py/netsuite_transactions.py

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/python3 /Users/clientsUserName/py/google_analytics_transactions.py

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/python3 /Users/clientsUserName/python/netsuite_saved_searches.py

It’s worth noting that Contra Systems offers NetSuite monitoring as a service. We can build it, monitoring it, or both.