Rsync command failing as a Cron Tab
Benjamin R. Haskell
rsync at benizi.com
Tue Sep 21 17:13:59 MDT 2010
On Tue, 21 Sep 2010, Ian Skinner wrote:
> We have this Rsync command that does what is desired when ran either directly OR with a shell script.
>
> /usr/local/bin/rsync -vvv -P --stats -zrtpl --delete --password-file=/export/home/webuser/.appprod --log-file=/exp*/h*/web*/logs/rsync-log --exclude "*.htacc*" /exp*/h*/xter*/htdocs/ webuser at appprod::dprweb_www > /exp*/h*/web*/logs/rsync-output
>
> But no matter how we put it into a cron task, we get nothing. No
> errors, no logs, no output, just nothing.
>
> 14 15 * * * cd /usr/local/doc/rsync/; ./rsyncjob.sh #WebMirror
>
> Can anybody shed some light on where we can find out why this doesn't
> do anything?
Check to see where your cron processes are being logged. Often it's to
local sendmail and/or via syslog. Try capturing stderr as well:
rsync [...etc...] > /path/to/rsync-output 2> /path/to/rsync-error-out
(or possibly:)
rsync [...etc...] &> /path/to/rsync-output-and-errors
More diagnosis will probably require finding the cron logs. (For linux
and others, often /var/log/messages will have basic diagnostics per cron
job.)
General cron advice:
Via the shell script, under cron, it's often necessary to specify full
paths (for security and/or just-because). Cron user also usually has
different privileges than a regular user. Perhaps there are permissions
problems with where rsync is installed in /usr/local.
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