Rsync command failing as a Cron Tab

[Benjamin R. Haskell]

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.