crontab and stdout

circus78 · 03-07-2015, 07:12 AM

Hi,
I am using Debian 6 and I have this cronjob:

Code:

8 0 * * * /bin/tar -czf /var/spool/backup/home-`date +\%Y\%m\%d`.tar.gz -T /root/folder.txt 1>/dev/null

/root/folder.txt contains:

Code:

/home/user1
/home/user3
/home/user44
..

Every day I get this by email:

/bin/tar: Removing leading `/' from member names

Why? I think this is stdout, and I put 1> /dev/null in my script.

Thank you

rknichols · 03-07-2015, 08:24 AM

That message is being sent to stderr. Either of these will work:

Code:

8 0 * * * /bin/tar -czf ... >/dev/null 2>&1
8 0 * * * /bin/tar -czf ... &>/dev/null

Of course that will discard all error messages. It would be better just to avoid the error by running tar from the root directory and removing the leading "/" from the paths in that file.

Code:

8 0 * * * /bin/tar -czf /var/spool/backup/home-`date +\Y\%m\%d`.tar.gz -C / -T /root/folder.txt 1>/dev/null

or

Code:

8 0 * * * cd / && /bin/tar -czf /var/spool/backup/home-`date +\%Y\%m\%d`.tar.gz -T /root/folder.txt 1>/dev/null

circus78 · 03-07-2015, 12:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rknichols

That message is being sent to stderr. Either of these will work:

Code:

8 0 * * * /bin/tar -czf ... >/dev/null 2>&1
8 0 * * * /bin/tar -czf ... &>/dev/null

Of course that will discard all error messages. It would be better just to avoid the error by running tar from the root directory and removing the leading "/" from the paths in that file.

Code:

8 0 * * * /bin/tar -czf /var/spool/backup/home-`date +\Y\%m\%d`.tar.gz -C / -T /root/folder.txt 1>/dev/null

or

Code:

8 0 * * * cd / && /bin/tar -czf /var/spool/backup/home-`date +\%Y\%m\%d`.tar.gz -T /root/folder.txt 1>/dev/null

Hi,
I get the same behavior:

Code:

/home/user:# tar -czf /var/spool/backup/backup.tar.gz -C / -T /root/folder.txt
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names

Code:

/home/user:# cd /
/# tar -czf /var/spool/backup/backup.tar.gzz -T /root/folder.txt
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names

Thank you for your answer (I was wrong about stdout...)

circus78 · 03-07-2015, 12:39 PM

Sorry, of course I need to strip "/" from my folder.txt

Thank you