cron.php problem in Magento 1.9.2.4

Question

When i run cron.php like http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/PATH_TO_MAGENTO/cron.php on my local server wamp i get a white page which means is runs properly.

But when i run on my remote server i get magento page saying There was no 404 CMS page configured or found.

This means cron.php isn't running properly?

I'm running cron.php via cronjob in my cpanel like this /opt/alt/php56/usr/bin/php /home/path/to/magento/cron.php >> /home/path/to/magento/var/log/cron.log.

Update:

Including $isShellDisabled = true; make it work with cronjob /opt/alt/php56/usr/bin/php /home/path/to/magento/cron.php >> /home/path/to/magento/var/log/cron.log. Then i changed cronjob to /bin/sh /home/path/to/magento/cron.sh > /home/path/to/magento/var/log/cron_sh.log and it also works.

Answer 1

Cron.php file not excute from browser because it is restricted from .htaccess file. You can comment the below two lines in .htaccess file at the bottom, then it will work.

<Files cron.php>
    #Order allow,deny
    #Deny from all
</Files>

You can also add the below line in cron.php file

$isShellDisabled = true; 

after the below code:

$isShellDisabled = is_array($disabledFuncs) ? in_array('shell_exec', $disabledFuncs) : true;
$isShellDisabled = (stripos(PHP_OS, 'win') === false) ? $isShellDisabled : true;

Answer 2

First of all i dont know why its showing 404 page. Rather it should show

You don't have permission to access /cron.php on this server. Apache/2.4.23 (Win64) PHP/5.6.25 Server at domain.magento.com Port 80

Because if you open .htaccess file in magento root you will find this

###########################################
## Deny access to cron.php
    <Files cron.php>
       Order allow,deny
       Deny from all
    </Files>

Its good because no one should access cron.php file through browser.

Now the most important part is... you should never run cron.php file through browser. Rather run cron.sh. This file also calls cron.php internally. And this wont start running again if its already running which cron.php does.