Crontab not working

Zeno McDohl · 10-08-2008, 03:04 PM

Code:

5 6 * * sat mutt -s "BIYG backup `date +%m-%d-%y`" -n -F /dev/null -a /home/xxx/backup/biyg_backup_`date +%y%m%d`.tgz xxx@gmail.com < /dev/null

Gives me an error:

Quote:

U 2 root@xxx.org Sat Sep 27 06:05 25/952 "Cron <zeno@vps> mutt -s "BIYG backup `date +"

Code:

/bin/sh: -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching ``'
/bin/sh: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file

Any idea why? That mutt line works just fine in /bin/sh

Woodypecker · 10-08-2008, 03:12 PM

Obviously, if you copied your line correctly, there is a missing backtick.
Backticks mean the same as old "eval", actually yours was intended to add the
result of a formatted date (but that's malformed as well) to the subject.
As an example, date "+%d.%m.%Y" gives the current date in day.month.year notification.
Your line most likely should look more like mutt -s "BIYG backup `date +"%y-%m-%d"`

Zeno McDohl · 10-08-2008, 03:23 PM

My code had worked in sh as so:

Code:

sh-3.2$  mutt -s "BIYG backup `date +%m-%d-%y`" -n -F /dev/null -a /home/xxx/backup/biyg_backup_`date +%y%m%d`.tgz xxx@gmail.com < /dev/null
sh-3.2$

And your way works too:

Code:

sh-3.2$  mutt -s "BIYG backup `date +"%m-%d-%y"`" -n -F /dev/null -a /home/xxx/backup/biyg_backup_`date +%y%m%d`.tgz xxx@gmail.com < /dev/null
sh-3.2$

So my way didn't work in crontab because it handles backticks differently?

colucix · 10-08-2008, 04:10 PM

From man 5 crontab:

Quote:

Percent-signs (%) in the command, unless escaped with backslash (\),
will be changed into newline characters, and all data after the first % will
be sent to the command as standard input.

this is the meaning of the error message: the string "mutt -s "BIYG backup `date +" is interpreted as the command, the rest of the line as standard input. Obviously the shell complains about an unexpected end of file, due to the first backtick left unclosed.

Zeno McDohl · 10-08-2008, 05:55 PM

Ah, I should have just RTFM.

Anyway, didn't need to fix the backticks and it worked just fine when escaping the percent signs.