Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Florian Philipp <lists@×××××××××××.net>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] crontab not executing
Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 06:04:43
Message-Id: 4DFED808.4060707@binarywings.net
In Reply to: [gentoo-user] crontab not executing by Grant
1 Am 20.06.2011 00:37, schrieb Grant:
2 > One of my systems has a crontab like this to clean up and consolidate
3 > the output of the video monitoring app "motion":
4 >
5 > # crontab -l
6 > # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE - edit the master and reinstall.
7 > # (/home/grant/cron.root.txt installed on Sat Sep 25 10:42:18 2010)
8 > # (Cron version V5.0 -- $Id: crontab.c,v 1.12 2004/01/23 18:56:42 vixie Exp $)
9 > 50 23 * * * /bin/rm /home/motion/$(date -d 'yesterday' +%Y%m%d)*.jpg
10 > 55 23 * * * /bin/rm /home/motion/$(date -d 'yesterday' +%Y%m%d)*.avi
11 > 59 23 * * * /usr/bin/mencoder /home/motion/$(date +%Y%m%d)*.avi -noidx
12 > -o /home/motion/full-$(date +%Y%m%d).avi -ovc copy -oac copy
13 >
14 > If I execute each command manually, it works great, but nothing
15 > happens otherwise. Can someone tell me why this crontab doesn't seem
16 > to be executing?
17 >
18 > - Grant
19 >
20
21 I might be wrong but as I understand it, cron executes your commands in
22 /bin/sh, not /bin/bash. Therefore you should use the `date -d
23 'yesterday' +%Y%m%d` syntax instead of $(date -d 'yesterday' +%Y%m%d).
24
25 Additionally, % signs are replaced with newlines. You have to escape
26 them: `date -d 'yesterday' +\%Y\%m\%d`
27
28 Hope this helps,
29 Florian Philipp

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Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] crontab not executing Adam Carter <adamcarter3@×××××.com>