This is fixed in version 0.4.1. Thanks.

When you run 'whenever' with no options like that it doesn't show you your actual crontab file, but rather your schedule.rb converted to cron syntax.

Run 'crontab -l' to see your crontab file.

ah yea....keep forgetting that. sorry! have you experienced any issues with a cron task being invoked more than once at the same time? I am pretty good about logging for my tasks and I have the following in my log:

[2009-11-19 08:00:14] [Info] Starting send_daily_activity_email task... [2009-11-19 08:00:14] [Info] Starting send_daily_activity_email task... [2009-11-19 08:00:15] [Info] Sent a daily activity email to 'corgan1003@gmail.com' [2009-11-19 08:00:15] [Info] Sent a daily activity email to 'corgan1003@gmail.com' [2009-11-19 08:00:15] [Info] Finished send_daily_activity_email task. [2009-11-19 08:00:15] [Info] Finished send_daily_activity_email task.

As you can see, my task was run twice at the same time but my crontab is definitely not saying to do this:
0 8 * cd /Users/TAmoyal/Desktop/RoR_Projects/mls && RAILS_ENV=development /usr/bin/env rake util:send_daily_activity_email >> /Users/TAmoyal/Desktop/RoR_Projects/mls/log/cron.log 2>&1

I should add some output to the plain whenever command..

I've never seen a job run twice like that. I would check your whole crontab file to make sure there's not a duplicate entry in there and also that there's not a duplicate record in the database for that user.

well the task is invoked twice so it would have nothing to do with duplicate database entries (however there are not duplicates). i also checked my crontab file. anyway, since whenever just writes to cron this is obviously not a whenever bug so i'll close the issue. thanks for the comments

I realized I might not have been clear enough:

If I use whenever from the command line, everything is generated properly, with the correct environment specified for any tasks.

If I use whenever via capistrano, any jobs outside of a conditional are added to the crontab. Those jobs have the right environment set.

If I try to write a job conditionally, using @environment or Rails.env, nothing inside the conditional is written to the crontab when I use capistrano, e.g. 'cap staging deploy' or 'cap production deploy'.

It was a capistrano issue, not whenever.

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. So you've resolved this issue?

Yes, thanks -- we tracked it back to Capistrano. Thanks for the library, too; just fantastic work.

The current one, that not depend of ActiveSupport is:
every 1.day, :at => "#{Time.parse('6:30 A').getlocal.strftime("%H:%M")}" do

Whenever creates jobs using the time zone of the server it is run on so you need to account for that. I would gladly accept a path to provide custom time zone support, but have no intentions of adding that feature myself currently.

Absolutely. I've been slacking on getting that in only because I need to make a couple modifications for backwards compatibility. Soon!

This is available now in version 0.4.0

I should mention that "--load-file=file_path" does not work for me

The correct usage is "--load-file file_path" (drop the "=")

With that, in combination with detecting your environment in your cap file and separate schedule files for each environment (perhaps schedule_production.rb, schedule_staging.rb, etc) you should be able to accomplish this.

I actually tried that but now I see the issue. I was checking the results of the command bu doing whenever which probably defaults back to config/schedule.rb. Now when I check it with crontab -l, it actually gives me the cron jobs and I see that --load-file PATH did work properly. I was confused and thought whenever looked at the system cron

Just update your schedule.rb file with:

if Rails.env.development?
stuff else
other stuff end

@retr0h I prefer to keep these things in separate files

To each their own. In the end it generates a crontab.

Ouch. I had no idea. Thanks

http://gemcutter.org/gems/whenever

Awesome! Thank you for taking quick action. Much appreciated.

Is there anything you suggest I fix? This sounds like a clash with Rake, which Whenever uses, but not a problem with Whenever directly.

Branding Task to my forehead as a name not to use for AR models. In all seriousness I thought that Rake name-spaced Rake::Task to specifically avoid this?

Yup, I'm definitely considering a bunch of options for ranges, limits, etc.

Does the Ubuntu cron log capture stderr as well as stdout? If not, you could try my fyi gem which captures everything and logs it for you.

90% of mysterious cron problems come down to the fact that cron runs with a different path. To find out what path it's using, set up a cron job that echoes the path to standard out and inspect your Ubuntu / fyi log. Is it the same as the path you have when running your email job manually?

I'm not sure that it does but I set up fyi (thanks for that!) and here is what the output looks like ...

INFO -- : command: /home/deploy/apps/pet/releases/20090901113413/script/runner -e production 'Plog.send_reminders' duration: 7.232412s
status: SUCCESS
stdout:
stderr:

When I echo my path from cron ...

[2009-09-02T14:21:01.714779 #8617] INFO -- : command: echo /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games duration: 0.008s
status: SUCCESS
stdout: /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
stderr:

Which is the same that whenever pushes into there with --update-crontab

integrated ~: echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games integrated ~: which ruby
/usr/bin/ruby

Looks like my path is ok - to be sure I used /usr/bin/ruby /home/deploy/apps/pet/releases/20090901113413/script/runner

Bummer, no biggy tho, thanks for your help!

Ok, well we can cross the path off the list of suspects.

Are you sure that the emails would be written out in production? I'm not certain but I think that ActionMailer logs email contents in development (and maybe test) but not production.

Anyway, the fact that send_reminders took 7 seconds suggests something is happening. I'm not sure why it's not working though!

Want to know something weirdererer? This one works - sends the emails and everything.

5 15 * fyi '/home/deploy/apps/pet/current/script/runner -e production "Plog.send_reminders"'

This one does not send the emails - but it does run without error - and creates a log etc. Funky. Stick a fork in me i'm stumped.

5 15 * /home/deploy/apps/pet/current/script/runner -e production "Plog.send_reminders"

I'm just going to take out
after "deploy:symlink", "deploy:update_crontab"

And use current (rather than the release) and keep the same crontab. ha :)

That is truly odd. I am baffled!

The --write-crontab option will always completely overwrite the crontab file. Try using the --update-crontab option. You might want to clear out your crontab file first as the update option will leave those existing entries alone.

Apologies. The first capistrano blog post was what I stumbled upon and I see now the README shows the proper argument. Sorry again.....

No problem. Hope it works for you.

Hey Tom, the 1.month jobs are a little tricky. Unless you specify a day, Whenever (which uses Chronic to parse times) will assume you mean today which is why you're getting a 5 instead of a 1.

The best solution is to do:
every 1.month, :at => 'beginning of the month at 4am'

This issue covers the same thing:
http://github.com/javan/whenever/issues/closed#issue/13

Perfect thanks!

Thanks! I believe this is a problem with the shortcuts like :hourly, :daily. As a temporary workaround, try using "every 1.hour" instead.

"every 1.hour" works. I'll use that for now, thanks.

This issue was solved in the latest build of the gem (0.3.7).

I'd gladly accept a patch for this! But seeing as Whenever has been around for a while and currently does not run jobs sequentially, I don't think that should become the default behavior. How about a syntax like:

every 1.day, :at => '3pm' do

sequential do
  command "one"
  command "two"
end

command "three"
command "four"

end

Where "one" and "two" will run sequentially and "three" and "four" will run in parallel.

I propose following DSL:

every 1.day, :at => '3pm', : sequential => true do

 ...

end

that's fine with me, as long as sequential defaults to false

I agree with javan, this should not be default as this is not the idea behind whenever an indeed cron, but it could be implemented as an option, which id be happy to do, however, dj, or starling sounds more to the needs of this type of thing

Thanks for this report. I'm going to push a new version out soon and I'll be sure to add a newline to the end of the output.

I had this issue as well, which led to me bypassing whenever. I'd definitely like to see this fixed as having source-controlled crontrab generation is ideal for me.

Adds new line after closing Whenever comment. Prevents accumulation of new lines with each --update-crontab. Closed by 434423f

This should be fixed now with the release of version 0.3.5. Could someone who was having trouble before try again and report back?

Was able to verify that your fix works. Much appreciate the quick turn around. Thank you.

Fixed it for me!

There is a rake helper that is designed for these type of tasks. Try:

every 1.day, :at => '4am' do
  rake "thinking_sphinx:stop"
end

The rake helper automatically cd's into your app and sets the environment, but will use the environment you have set in your schedule.rb (defaults to production) and will respect anything you pass in using the --set option.

Hi there, I required 'rake' in the Whenever gem after following the Railscast on creating a gem. http://railscasts.com/episodes/135-making-a-gem I'm not confident that it needs to be there, and I will experiment with removing it.

I can confirm that it is causing a problem if you require 'whenever' in a rails app that has a Task model. However, if you require thethe gem using the config.gem syntax you won't have this problem because it doesn't load the actual lib, just requires its presence.

# environment.rb
config.gem 'javan-whenever', :lib => false, :source => "http://gems.github.com"

Finally, no, you don't need to require the whenever gem in your app. Just make sure the gem is installed on your production server or else you won't be able to deploy your schedule.

javan...thank you for all the work and looking into it.

Thank you for confirming that removing the line out of the environment file wouldnt be a problem. My production servers have the gem installed so that shouldnt be a problem.

Once again, thank you for all your hard work.

Those comments definitely weren't written by Whenever. Whenever calls the unix command crontab to actually write the crontab file so perhaps it is to blame. If you find that there's a way to avoid this with the crontab command, let me know.

What OS are you running?

Gentoo 4.1.2

I figured it was a cron thing, but was hoping you had seen it before. Google did not yield anything helpful as far as turning it off. We probably just need to fork and remove the first three lines of the file every time.

Sounds similar to http://github.com/javan/whenever/issues#issue/1

The workaround, for now, is to uninstall the version of Rails that you're not using.

The problem is in lib/whenever.rb, it needs to check of there's a RAILS_GEM_VERSION defined before requiring 'activesupport'. I should have this fixed soon, but I'd welcome a patch if you feel like doing it.

Version 0.3.1 was just released. Hopefully it fixes your issue.

I'm having this same problem, but with more recent gem versions:
rails 2.3.3
whenever 0.4.0

I also have rails 2.3.4 and 2.3.5 installed (along with many other versions).
The interesting thing is that the 'whenever' command works fine in my win32 dev system, but fails to operate on my hosting server (Linux). I get the follow error:

Missing the Rails 2.3.3 gem. Please gem install -v=2.3.3 rails, update your RAILS_GEM_VERSION setting in config/environment.rb for the Rails version you do have installed, or comment out RAILS_GEM_VERSION to use the latest version installed.

are you showing all of the cron output there? your first example has a 9 in the hour place and 18 in the day.

# .---------------- minute (0 - 59) 
# |  .------------- hour (0 - 23)
# |  |  .---------- day of month (1 - 31)
# |  |  |  .------- month (1 - 12) OR jan,feb,mar,apr ... 
# |  |  |  |  .---- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0 or 7)  OR sun,mon,tue,wed,thu,fri,sat 
# |  |  |  |  |
# *  *  *  *  *  command to be executed

no, the complete output was:

0 9 18 * * command

can you paste your schedule.rb file? something seems off.

every 1.month, :at => "9 AM" do
  command "..."
end

Ah, I see the problem (other than me not having good docs in this area). When you use :at with 1.month, the day, hour, and minute get parsed from the time. So when you just use a time like 9am, it assumes the day you mean is today.

One way to correct this is give it a full date. I admit that this looks ugly, but it should work: every 1.month, :at => "January 1st 9am"

It will ignore the "January", but it's necessary for a successful parse (Whenever uses the Chronic gem for parsing dates and times).

Hope that helps.

the

If you dont want to give the full date, you could try something like this:

every 1.month, :at => "start of the month at 9am"
This will produce the intended "0 9 1 ". It will also keep your code a little cleaner :)

Hope that helps.

-AP

Thanks Javan.

As you said, thats not good looking but it works!

tsommer...the above solution I posted should work. I'm not sure if you looked at it.

"start of the month at 9am" -- that rules! thanks.

Is there any chance Capistrano is logging in as a different user than the one you're manually logging in as?

Is whenever supposed to update my /etc/crontab? There are no cron jobs in there but somehow running "whenever" still shows valid cron jobs

Running 'whenever' simply converts your schedule.rb file into cron syntax and outputs it, running 'crontab -l' will list the actual installed cron jobs on your system.

If you paste your schedule.rb file, I might be able to assist your further.

crontab -l definitely shows the tasks.


# Begin Whenever generated tasks for: appname

0,10,20,30,40,50 rake util:update_band_shows >> log/cron.log 2>&1




my schedule.rb is:


set :cron_log, "log/cron.log"


every 10.minutes do


command "rake util:update_band_shows"

end


# reindex sphinx every 2 days

every 2.days, :at => '8am' do


rake "thinking_sphinx:stop RAILS_ENV=production"

rake "thinking_sphinx:index RAILS_ENV=production"

rake "thinking_sphinx:start RAILS_ENV=production"

end

Why the command for the first rake task and then rake for the following (sphinx) tasks? A couple other things. Cron needs full paths to execute tasks (and for the logs). So your first command might work if it was formatted something like: command "cd /path/to/my/app && util:update_band_shows"

And the path to the log should be absolute too.

Sorry, that was supposed to be: command "cd /path/to/my/app && rake util:update_band_shows"

i just realized that the "rake" command makes the cron change to the rails_root directory. i am testing that out again

even though the "rake" command was telling the cron to cd to my app path, I still got "env: rake: No such file or directory". then i tried doing command "cd #{RAILS_ROOT} && rake util:update_band_shows" and i got /bin/sh: line 1: rake: command not found. the rake works fine when i run it manually. do you know what the issue could be?

It sounds like cron doesn't know where rake is. Try setting a PATH in your schedule.rb file. For me, rake is in /opt/local/bin/, so I might do something like this:

env :PATH, "/opt/local/bin/rake:$PATH"

although you may need to add more paths than just that one.

This was my problem as well, setting the path with rake fixed it.

thanks, this also fixed my problem. do you have a different schedule.rb for each environment? it would make sense to have a different rake location and different tasks for each environment. how do you handle this?

My staging and production environment are almost identical so I don't have a need for separate files, but you can use the --load-file option to load a file other than schedule.rb so that might suit you.

ok thanks for your help, i'm closing the issue

I have run into the same problem. I am trying this instead right now:
every 10.minutes do
command "rake util:update_myspace_shows" end

Yeah I did the same, change it to a command instead of rake runner

You might also try adding '/usr/bin' to your PATH in your schedule.rb file. Something like:

env :PATH, '/usr/bin:$PATH'

Although you may need to add more paths than just the one.

That should do the trick too, you can close the ticket if you like

Sorry for the confusion here -- I need to handle this better. Using :day is intended to use cron's shortcut syntax of @daily and can't accept an :at option.

Try: every 1.day, :at => '9am'

Thanks for pointing this out. I can't give this issue much priority at this time, but I'll gladly accept a merge a pull request if you want to take a stab at it.

I have sent you a pull request for a change to use 0-6 instead of sun-sat for weekday.

Thanks! I just took a quick glance it all looks perfect. I'm get this merged in soon -- probably this weekend.

You're fork was finally merged in and included in version 0.3.1. Thanks again.

Thanks, that's a pretty good solution. You could also modify your capistrano task to include the full path to whenever. Something like:

run "cd #{release_path} && /#{RAILS_ROOT}/vendor/gems/javan-whenever-0.2.2/bin/whenever --update-crontab #{application}"

I can't get this to work either..

Do you mean specify the environment when running the whenever command or in your schedule.rb file? In your schedule.rb file you can: set :environment, :staging

And someone has created somewhat of a hack to automatically detect your environment that may or may not work for you: http://wiki.github.com/javan/whenever/automatically-detecting-environment

I just published a new version of the gem (0.3.0) that allows you to set variables, including the environment, on the fly:

http://wiki.github.com/javan/whenever/setting-variables-on-the-fly

That works perfectly, thank you!

Try installing the gem with sudo:

sudo gem install javan-whenever

or

sudo rake gems:install

I've done that.

config.gem "chronic"
config.gem 'javan-whenever', :lib => false, :source => 'http://gems.github.com'

The dependencies were installed and then whenever was installed.

[jlee@casweb5 mehmry]$ gem list --local

*** LOCAL GEMS ***

actionmailer (2.3.2, 2.2.2)
actionpack (2.3.2, 2.2.2)
activerecord (2.3.2, 2.2.2)
activeresource (2.3.2, 2.2.2)
activesupport (2.3.2, 2.2.2)
authlogic (2.0.13)
be9-acl9 (0.10.0)
calendar_date_select (1.15)
cgi_multipart_eof_fix (2.5.0)
chronic (0.2.3)
columnize (0.3.0)
daemons (1.0.10)
fastercsv (1.4.0)
fastthread (1.0.7, 1.0.1)
gem_plugin (0.2.3)
googlecharts (1.3.6)
hoe (1.12.2)
javan-whenever (0.2.2)
linecache (0.43)
mislav-will_paginate (2.3.8)
mongrel (1.1.5)
mysql (2.7)
passenger (2.2.2, 2.1.2)
prawn (0.4.1)
prawn-layout (0.1.0)
rack (1.0.0, 0.9.1)
rails (2.3.2, 2.2.2)
rake (0.8.6, 0.8.4)
ruby-debug (0.10.3)
ruby-debug-base (0.10.3)
ruby-net-ldap (0.0.4)
rubyforge (1.0.3)
sqlite3-ruby (1.2.4)
technicalpickles-shoulda_generator (0.2.1)
thoughtbot-factory_girl (1.2.1)
thoughtbot-shoulda (2.10.1)

[jlee@casweb5 mehmry]$ whenever .
-bash: whenever: command not found

[jlee@casweb5 mehmry]$ wheneverize .
-bash: wheneverize: command not found

This may just be a PATH issue. On my system (OS X) rubygems installed the whenever binary in /opt/local/bin/whenever. Perhaps the binary was installed somewhere outside of your path?

Yes, I'm using Ruby Enterprise Edition so that was the issue. My path was the problem. Thanks!

I have the same problem. Other gems run normally. How can I set PATH for 'whenever'?

RubyGems Environment:
- RUBYGEMS VERSION: 1.3.1 - RUBY VERSION: 1.8.6 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 287) [universal-darwin9.0] - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8 - RUBY EXECUTABLE: /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby - EXECUTABLE DIRECTORY: /usr/bin

So you're also running Ruby Enterprise Edition? First, you'll need to find the whenever binary. (If all else fails, run find / --name "whenever")

Then either supply the full path to whenever in your Capistrano task or set a PATH in your schedule.rb file like:

env :PATH, "/your/path:$PATH"

(you'll likely need to add more paths than just the one)

No Javan. I use Ruby 1.8.6 on localhost and can execute nor 'whenever' or 'wheneverize'. On my production server I use Ruby Enterprise Edition and Whenever works ideally.

Locally, did you install the gem using sudo? sudo gem install javan-whenever

I've tried but got only this:
could not find gem javan-wheneve locally or in a repository

My remote SOURCES:

 - http://gems.rubyforge.org/

It should be javan-whenever, not javan-wheneve

I suggest setting a PATH environment variable in your schedule.rb file so your system knows where to find rake. Something like:

env :PATH, '/opt/ruby-enterprise/bin'

Another alternative is to define your path at the top of your crontab file. Run /bin/env or /usr/bin/env and then copy the line starting 'PATH=' into your crontab. For example, I have:
$ crontab -l PATH=/usr/java/jdk/bin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/java/jdk/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/home/deploy/bin

Begin Whenever generated tasks ...

the feature was added in v0.2.2

I am experiencing this bug as well with 2.2.2 and 2.3.2 installed on my production system. Here is my stack trace:

/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:149:in `activate': can't activate activesupport (= 2.2.2, runtime), already activated activesupport-2.3.2 (Gem::Exception)

    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:165:in `activate'
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:164:in `each'
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:164:in `activate'
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:49:in `gem'
    from ./config/boot.rb:59:in `load_rails_gem'
    from ./config/boot.rb:53:in `load_initializer'
    from ./config/boot.rb:38:in `run'
    from ./config/boot.rb:11:in `boot!'
    from ./config/boot.rb:109
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require'
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require'
    from ./Rakefile:4
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/javan-whenever-0.3.0/lib/whenever.rb:6:in `load'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/javan-whenever-0.3.0/lib/whenever.rb:6
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require'
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/javan-whenever-0.3.0/bin/whenever:7
    from /usr/bin/whenever:19:in `load'
    from /usr/bin/whenever:19

Thanks. The quick and dirty fix is to uninstall the version of activesupport you're not using. I'l get a fix in place soon.

I have the same problem. Looking forward to the fix as whenever looks awesome :-)

+1 have this same issue. Going to try removing activesupport 2.3.2 since I'm not using it at the moment.

I am not using Rails 2.3 on my slice yet but I had some of the gems installed. I removed gems returned by gem list | grep 2.3.2, re-deployed and verified the correct generated crontab file. Thanks.

Just to ditto on the 2.2.2 vs 2.3.2 problem. I need both installed on my mac (personal projects are using 2.3.2, but work project using 2.2.2), so the workaround isn't an option. ::(

+1 on this.

Removed activesupport dependency from gemspec. Closed by 6fbb125

Version 0.3.1 was just released and should fix this issue. Let me know if it doesn't.

Didn't work:
I got the message:
./Rakefile:3: undefined method `import' for main:Object (NoMethodError)

    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/javan-whenever-0.3.7/lib/whenever.rb:6:in `load'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/javan-whenever-0.3.7/lib/whenever.rb:6
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require'
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/javan-whenever-0.3.7/bin/whenever:7
    from /usr/bin/whenever:19:in `load'
    from /usr/bin/whenever:19

while my gem list is:
actionmailer (2.3.4)
actionpack (2.3.4)
activemerchant (1.4.2, 1.4.1)
activerecord (2.3.4)
activerecord-tableless (0.1.0)
activeresource (2.3.4)
activesupport (2.3.4)
authlogic (2.1.3)
builder (2.1.2)
calendar_date_select (1.15)
capistrano (2.5.10)
chronic (0.2.3)
compass (0.8.17)
fastercsv (1.5.0)
fastthread (1.0.7)
git (1.2.5)
haml (2.2.15)
haml-edge (2.3.100)
highline (1.5.1)
hoe (2.3.3)
htmlentities (4.2.0)
javan-whenever (0.3.7)
json_pure (1.2.0)
mislav-will_paginate (2.3.11)
mysql (2.8.1)
net-scp (1.0.2)
net-sftp (2.0.4)
net-ssh (2.0.16)
net-ssh-gateway (1.0.1)
passenger (2.2.7)
rack (1.0.1)
rails (2.3.4)
rake (0.8.7)
RedCloth (4.2.2)
rmagick (2.12.2)
rsl-stringex (1.0.3)
rspec (1.2.9)
rspec-rails (1.2.9)
rubyforge (2.0.3)
rubyzip (0.9.1)
searchlogic (2.3.9)
spree (0.9.2)
tlsmail (0.0.1)

You're using an old version of the gem, please upgrade to the newest version (0.4.1 at the moment). Note that it is now hosted at gemcutter.org.

Thank you for the quick response. Unfortunately I still get the same error message:
./Rakefile:3: undefined method `import' for main:Object (NoMethodError)

    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/whenever-0.4.1/lib/whenever.rb:5:in `load'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/whenever-0.4.1/lib/whenever.rb:5
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require'
    from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/whenever-0.4.1/bin/whenever:7
    from /usr/bin/whenever:19:in `load'
    from /usr/bin/whenever:19

It's choking when Whenever loads the Rakefile from your Rails (I assume) app. What's on line 3 of your Rakefile?

THe rakefile looks like this:
require 'rubygems'
require 'rake'

require 'lib/whenever/version.rb'

begin
require 'jeweler' Jeweler::Tasks.new do |gemspec|

gemspec.name        = "whenever"
gemspec.version     = Whenever::VERSION
gemspec.summary     = "Clean ruby syntax for defining and deploying messy cron jobs."
gemspec.description = "Clean ruby syntax for defining and deploying messy cron jobs."
gemspec.email       = "javan@javan.us"
gemspec.homepage    = "http://github.com/javan/whenever"
gemspec.authors     = ["Javan Makhmali"]
gemspec.add_dependency("chronic", '>= 0.2.3')

end Jeweler::GemcutterTasks.new rescue LoadError
puts "Jeweler not available. Install it with: sudo gem install jeweler -s http://gemcutter.org" end

require 'rake/testtask'
Rake::TestTask.new(:test) do |test|
test.libs << 'lib' << 'test' test.pattern = 'test/*.rb' test.verbose = true end

task :test => :check_dependencies

task :default => :test

So, line 3 is empty

That's Whenever's Rakefile.. Whenever tries to load the Rakefile from YOUR app, and it's dying on line 3 of it: "./Rakefile:3: undefined method `import' for main:Object (NoMethodError)"

Ah, my application's Rakefile does that in line 3:

import File.join(SPREE_ROOT, 'Rakefile')

And my application starts successfully

maybe change that "import" to "load"? i've never seen import in ruby.

That helps!
In Spree (www.spreecommerce.com) that Rakefile uses "import". I change it to "load"

Thank you very much, javan!

Alexander