How do I save a name-date changing file?
 

I just set my first CRON job to run a backup using DUMP.

I want the name of my backup to be 'BKUPMMDDYY'
where:
MM= month
DD= day
YY= year

So, how can I get this pickup the appropriate date? Do I need to create an script?

Thanks.

The following should work (use the variable $OUTPUTNAME as the file name):

Gilead, thanks for your help.

When I ran the command from the console, it works just fine:
[root@wxyz: root] $ /sbin/dump -0u -a -f /temp/dbkup/"bkup_`date '+%m%d%y'`" /home


But, when I run it from my crontest, I get a syntax error:


MAILTO=myusername@mydomain.com
00 12 * * * /sbin/dump -0u -a -f /temp/dbkup/"bkup_`date '+%m%d%y'`" /home



This is what the cron deamon emails to me:

Syntax error: EOF in backquote substitution


Do you have any idea why is this happening?

It could be that the date command isn't in the path used by the cron daemon. Can you try it with /usr/bin/date instead (or whatever the path is to date on your system)?

I found several paths and try them all with no luck. I am actually running FreeBSD (6.1), but this should not be too different, right?

Thanks.

I'd have thought the operation would be the same since it works at the command line. Can you try putting the command into a script and running the script from cron (I don't know how BSD parses the command to be run in cron)?

And on an unrelated note: if you want to be able to sensibly
sort your backup-files later on I'd recommend ymd instead of mdy.


Cheers,
Tink

Thanks guys! I end up writing a little script and it worked just fine that way.;)