Server Cron vs. Scheduled Task

[dynamite]

Is it possible to run the scheduled task scripts (such as promotion.php) through a cron job? The reason I ask is because when I tried I received the following error message:

/home2/*/public_html/forums/includes/cron/promotion.php: line 1: ?php: No
such file or directory
/home2/*/public_html/forums/includes/cron/promotion.php: line 4: syntax error
near unexpected token `||'
/home2/*/public_html/forums/includes/cron/promotion.php: line 4: `|| #
vBulletin 3.0.3 - Licence Number L*****'


I figured it would probably be less server intensive to run it server side through cron rather than through the script since I want it to run once a minute

[Wayne Luke]

While it would be less resource intensive to run the tasks through Cron, there needs to be a wrapper created. You cannot simply call the Scheduled Task PHP files from the command line.

[dynamite]

While it would be less resource intensive to run the tasks through Cron, there needs to be a wrapper created. You cannot simply call the Scheduled Task PHP files from the command line.

And I take it creating a wrapper is probably pretty complicated...
Do you think running the promotion script once a minute would have a large impact on a fairly active site? Since it involves opening up a new section of my site once a goal is reached, I don't want the user to have to wait a long period of time to be able to access that section of the site, but at the same time I don't want to bring the server to a crawl and affect the rest of the site.