Weird shell script behavior in a cron job
Can somebody explain this:
My backup script WILL detect that ExternalHD is not mounted, and attempt
to mount it, if I run it manually.
But it WON'T do that if it runs in a cron job.
I've isolated the relevant code into its own script, added debugging
output, and set it up to run every minute. Here's the test script:
#!
date >> ~/test.txt
pwd >> ~/test.txt
cd /media/ExternalHD/Backups
if [ "$?" = "1" ]; then
echo "mounting" >> ~/test.txt
mount /media/ExternalHD >> ~/test.txt
cd /media/ExternalHD/Backups
fi
pwd >> ~/test.txt
Here is what I get when the cron job trips, and ExternalHD is not mounted:
Wed Aug 30 10:49:01 PDT 2017
/root
/root
Wed Aug 30 10:50:01 PDT 2017
/root
/root
. . .
Wed Aug 30 10:55:01 PDT 2017
/root
/root
and here is what I get when I run the script from a command line:
Wed Aug 30 10:55:07 PDT 2017
/root
mounting
/media/ExternalHD/Backups
Why would the behavior be any different? Could it be that cron is
running it an entirely different shell, that doesn't understand the "if"
statement? Here's the crontab line:
* * * * * ~/test.sh
--
JHHL
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