why does my python cron job time out?

Question

I have a long cron job running a python script in CENTOS, but for some reason it seems to timeout or otherwise end without completion.

the job runs fine when executed straight from bash, but seems to stall in pretty much the same place every time when triggered by cron.

it seems like there's a timeout but apparently cron doesn't have one?

am at a loss of where to look to debug this... any pointers on where to look / how to debug are much appreciated!

Answer 1

first log stdout and stderr

18 20 * * * python2.6 script.py > /test.log 2>/test.err &

also check /var/log/messages for any information.

in my case i was running out of memory!

Feb  7 03:05:12 computer kernel: Out of memory: Kill process 4915 (python2.6) score 255 or sacrifice child