I am trying to schedule this backup job using CRON. The test I tried before in which I just scheduled an email to be sent worked fine. But no such luck here.

Here is what I did:



1) I created a file called backup.sh in the /etc/cron.daily folder, which had this as its contents:

#!/bin/bash
tar -czvf /backupdirectory/backup.tgz /directorytobackup


2) I installed this cron job in crontab:

12,32 * * * * /etc/cron.daily/backup.sh



Am I placing the backup.sh file in the wrong directory? Also, do I need to create an .sh file at all? Can't I just put the backup command right in the cron job instead of calling to the backup.sh file?

I'm so confused, I've been at this all afternoon.

Thanks in advance ....

Scripts in the /etc/cron.daily folder are run by cron automatically once a day (usually at 4 AM). You're right, you can just have a crontab entry that looks like:

12,32 * * * * tar -czvf <whatever> <whatever>

in your crontab. If you want a backup, I suggest adding the -p flag to tar to tell it to preserve permissions (you'll need to be root for this to work if there are files not owned by you).

Don't if what you posted was a typo but 12 32 * * * is invalid.

FIELD VALUE
------------------
minute 00 to 59
hour 00 to 23 (military time)
day 1 to 31
month 1 to 12
weekday 0 to 6 (0=Sunday) Note: Linux uses sun, mon...

Hi sdebiasio,
You are trying to run your job at 32:12H of each day. I guess you want at 12:32H. The first field is the minute, the hour is the second.

Hmm I think I need another coffee! No it wasn't a typo, that's what I used.

Let me try this again. You guys are great.

Ok - I scheduled this cron job in crontab:

25 15 * * * tar -czvf /backup directory/backup.tgz /directory to backup

and then installed it by typing "crontab crontab" at the command line.

It didn't work.

Isn't the syntax directing it to execute at 3:25pm on Wednesday? I am wondering why this didn't execute.

The syntax you gave tells it to execute at 3:25 PM every day. So it should've executed today. For sanity's sake make sure crond is running and chack your cron log in case there were errors (it should be in /var/log/cron). Also, you might want to provide the full path to tar just to be safe.

How do I make sure crond is running?

I checked the log file and I don't see any errors.

Thanks ...

Hi
You just enterIf it is running you will see it.
By the way I would put it into a sub-shell, redirecting the output to nullI didn't understand what you meaned by "I scheduled and installed". By the manual, all you have to do is enter "crontab -e" as the user owner of that queue. crontab will open your preferred editor for you to edit the job. When you save the edit and close the editor, it does a consistency test of the jobs and submit to the cron queue. You can see the scheduled jobs with "crontab -l".

Thanks for your help.

Oddly, the backup actually ran - precisely an hour after I scheduled it. It was scheduled for 4:35 in the Cron Job and ran at 5:35 instead. To test this, I just scheduled a job for 7:30 in crontab and it ran at 8:30.

Strange ...