Re: Cron not working
On Sun, 12 Jul 2015 14:22:22 -0400, Haines Brown wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 12, 2015 at 05:11:21PM +0000, Dan Purgert wrote:
>> On Sun, 12 Jul 2015 13:02:43 -0400, Haines Brown wrote:
>>
>> > This may be a FAQ, but it has me stumped. I try to do a weekly backup
>> > with this, but nothing happens, and there is nothing in syslog:
>> >
>> > # crontab -l 0 4 * * 0 /home/haines/scripts/backup
>> >
>> > I can run the script manually with # /home/haines/scripts/backup.
>> >
>> > Cron daemon is running:
>> >
>> > $ ps -ef | grep cron | grep -v grep root 8972 1 0 12:37 ?
>> > 00:00:00 cron
>>
>> It's most likely that your script is using some environment variable
>> that's not (inherently) present to the cron daemon; or a pathing issue
>> (e.g. ~/Documents is different to you than it is to the [root] Cron
>> job).
>
> Interesting suggestion. The backup script does the following:
>
> a) mounts the external drive b) sleeps a bit c) removes oldest backup
> with a find command d) constructs a backup directory using mkdir e)
> does a backup with the find command f) writes to a log using printf g)
> unmounts the backup drive
>
> I don't see how any of this draws on an environment variable. A possible
> exception is $(date) and `date +%Y.%m.%d`. I provide full paths in the
> script to avoid the other problem.
>
> The backup script is an executable owned by user.
Perhaps "environment variable" was the wrong phrase. I've run into
issues with cron jobs if I don't have it calling #!/bin/bash at the top
(or #!/bin/[whatever]) ... running from a local terminal doesn't catch it
because "sh somescript.sh" invokes shell first...
Although, if you're running this as "your user", then it might be failing
out as "mount" is only permitted to be run by root (might need to add it
to root's crontab).
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