I’m running a Laravel application on AWS Elastic Beanstalk and have set up a cron job to execute php artisan schedule:run using the following cron configuration file:

files:
  "/etc/cron.d/vehicles-update-status":
    mode: "000644"
    owner: root
    group: root
    content: |
      SHELL=/bin/bash
      * * * * * root . /opt/elasticbeanstalk/deployment/env && cd /var/www/html && /usr/bin/php php artisan schedule:run >> /var/www/html/laralog.log 2>&1

commands:
  01_restart_cron:
    command: "systemctl restart crond"
    test: "systemctl is-active --quiet crond"

However, when the cron job runs, it fails to connect to the database and I receive the following error:

LSTATE[08006] [7] connection to server at ‘127.0.0.1’, port 5432 failed: Connection refused
        Is the server running on that host and accepting TCP/IP connections? (Connection: pgsql, SQL: select * from “vehicles” where “vehicles”.“deleted_at” is null)”

The database works perfectly when accessed from the Laravel application itself. I’ve tried various configurations, but the cron job consistently fails with the same database connection error.

• I’m using Laravel 11 and PostgreSQL as the database.

• The cron job is running on an EC2 instance in AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

• The Laravel application’s .env file contains the correct database credentials.

• I’ve verified that the crond service is running.

What I’ve tried:

• I’ve tried various settings in the configuration file