How do I save a name-date changing file?

Xolotl · 10-11-2006, 05:06 PM

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.

gilead · 10-11-2006, 05:26 PM

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

Code:

OUTPUTNAME="BKUP`date '+%m%d%y'`"

Xolotl · 10-12-2006, 04:58 PM

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?

gilead · 10-12-2006, 06:04 PM

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)?

Xolotl · 10-13-2006, 06:25 PM

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.

gilead · 10-14-2006, 02:21 AM

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)?

Tinkster · 10-14-2006, 02:40 AM

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

Xolotl · 10-20-2006, 04:28 PM

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