WP-CLI: STDOUT error when called in CRON (crontab) - wp-cli

Question

Little help or guidance. Server is CentOS 7 - with WHM/CPanel installed.
Command:
$(which php) $(which wp) core update --require=/opt/wp-cli-pre.php --path=/home/USER/public_html/
The contents of /opt/wp-cli-pre.php
<?php
if(!defined('STDIN')) define('STDIN', fopen('php://stdin', 'r'));
if(!defined('STDOUT')) define('STDOUT', fopen('php://stdout', 'w'));
if(!defined('STDERR')) define('STDERR', fopen('php://stderr', 'w'));
Works as expected from the command line, but if from cron job, I get:
PHP Warning: Use of undefined constant STDOUT - assumed 'STDOUT' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in phar:///usr/local/bin/wp/vendor/wp-cli/wp-cli/php/utils.php on line 1057
output of "which php"
/usr/local/bin/php
output of "which wp"
/usr/local/bin/wp
I have installed the latest WP-CLI from https://wp-cli.org/

Answer 1

At long last, I have found the solution.
When the CRON runs a PHP script like this: */5 * * * * php /path/to/script.php
The SAPI name is: cgi-fcgi (on a WHM/CPanel install on CentOS)
It cannot find the CLI version setup by CPanel at /usr/local/bin/php as the $PATH var is just: /usr/bin:/bin
So, the solution is to not depend on the system environment to determine the PHP you want. But to set that directly.
Like this: */5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/php /path/to/script.php
It was always my assumption that if a CRON was setup in ROOT's crontab, it would inherit ROOT's environment. This apparently is not the case.

Answer 2

You should take a look at the following post.
https://forums.cpanel.net/threads/users-cannot-use-wp-cli-in-cron.643293/