PHPMailer works in browser but not working as cron job - php

Question

I have a simple php file that sends an email using PHPMailer. It works great when run from the browser.
When I try to run it from a cron job I don't get the email. I have looked for quite a while for an answer here, but I have not been able to get it to work.
Most solution have to do with relative paths in the php code. I changed the paths on the require lines to be absolute if cron job has a different path.
I am pretty new to all of this, so any help would be appreciated.
I am probably missing something simple.
Thanks in advance for your help.
<?php
/* Namespace alias. */
// Import PHPMailer classes into the global namespace
// These must be at the top of your script, not inside a function
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\SMTP;
/* If you installed PHPMailer without Composer do this instead: */
require '/hermes/bosnaweb21a/b1837/ipw.whitmerd/public_html/test03/include/PHPMailer/PHPMailer.php';
require '/hermes/bosnaweb21a/b1837/ipw.whitmerd/public_html/test03/include/PHPMailer/Exception.php';
require '/hermes/bosnaweb21a/b1837/ipw.whitmerd/public_html/test03/include/PHPMailer/SMTP.php';
//SMTP needs accurate times, and the PHP time zone MUST be set
date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York');
echo phpinfo();
echo __DIR__;
// Email the results
$mailSubject = "Email Subject";
// Create the body of the mail
$mailBody = "Body of email";
/* Create a new PHPMailer object. Passing TRUE to the constructor enables exceptions. */
$mail = new PHPMailer(TRUE);
// Configure the mail object for iPower email account
$mail->IsSMTP();
$mail->SMTPDebug = 2;
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Host = "smtp.ipower.com";
$mail->Port = 25;
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
$mail->isHtml(true);
$mail->CharSet = 'UTF-8';
$mail->Encoding = 'base64';
$mail->Username = "validuser";
$mail->Password = "password";
$mail->setFrom('Example#gmail.com', 'Example Name');
$mail->Subject = $mailSubject;
$mail->addAddress('Example#gmail.com', 'Example Name');
$mail->Body = $mailBody;
$mailSendSuccess = $mail->send();
$mail = null;
// Success or failure message
if ($mailSendSuccess) {
echo "<br>Email was sent sucessfully.";
} else {
echo "<br>There was a problem sending the email.";
}
I wanted to get the phpinfo() information with the job running from cron job. So I was trying to create a file in a know location.
I tried this simple file operation that works well from the browser, but not from the cron job.
I commented out the code to grab the phpinfo into a file to just create a dummy file and that is not working.
<?php
$tempDir = '/hermes/bosnaweb21a/b1837/ipw.whitmerd/public_html/test03/misc/';
$tempFile = 'phpini_fromcron.html';
$fileContents = dirname(__DIR__);
$fileContents .= '<br>';
$fileContents .= 'Test file contents.';
// ob_start();
// phpinfo();
// $phpini = ob_get_contents();
// ob_end_clean();
// $fileContents .= $phpini;
$createFile = fopen($tempDir . $tempFile, 'w');
if (fwrite($createFile, $fileContents)) {
echo "File created.";
} else {
echo "There were problems.";
}
fclose($createFile);
Solved, kinda?
Turns out the directory name was the problem. I don't know what, as the permissions are set the same.
If anyone has a theory as to why, I would love to hear it.