find the name of user executing the cron

Question

I've got a file index.php. there are 2 users having separate crons running accesing the scripts. is there any function in php/linux to identify which user's cron called that... its a cent-os..

Answer 1

• $USER environment variable
• whoami command

Answer 2

This returns the current user:

$user = exec('whoami');

http://php.net/manual/function.exec.php

Answer 3

Two options:

• Let the cronscript call the script directly, e.g. php -f script.php
• Let the cronscript specifify use user as a parameter, e.g. wget http://host/script.php?user=$USER

Answer 4

You have to pass user info from your client (cronjob in this case). On server end php process is always run by webserver (apache in your case). So setup the cron to pass user something like: example.com/index.php?user=$USER and get this on server end as $_GET['user']