[NTLUG:Discuss] freebsd pisses me off

[Stuart Johnston]

Jay Urish wrote:
> Guys, I need some help.
> 
> I am trying to kick off an rsync job from crontab on a freebsd box.
> My entry in crontab looks like this:
> 30 17 * * 1 root /etc/cronjobs/wednesday.backup
> 
> 
> /etc/cronjobs/wednesday.backup contains this:
> 
> #!/bin/sh
> rsync -vau --stats --delete /mnt/rdl-pdc-D/
> /mnt/daily/rdl-pdc/wednesday/ | /bin/sendEmail -f nas at rdlsupply.com -t
> jurish at rdlsupply.com -u "Wednesday backup" -s mail.rdlsupply.com
>> /dev/null &
> 
> I can kick it off from the command line and it works great!
> The complaint? When cron kicks it off, all I get is an empty email and 
> rsync dies.
> 
> 
> I don't get it..
> 
> Does anybody have any suggestions?

Have you tried specifying the full path of the rsync command in your 
script?  Cron will often clean out your ENV so you might loose your PATH.

Take of the /dev/null redirect so cron will send you errors.

You probably don't want to background the process for running under cron?