[ale] cron fun

[Danny Cox]

Robert,

On Fri, 2007-02-02 at 12:03 -0500, Robert L. Harris wrote:

> 
> Ok, I've got a cronjob, /etc/cron.d/dumppkgs that reads as such:
> 
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> # /etc/cron.d/php4: crontab fragment for php4
> #  This purges session files older than X, where X is defined in seconds
> #  as the largest value of session.gc_maxlifetime from all your php.ini
> #  files, or 24 minutes if not defined.  See /usr/lib/php4/maxlifetime
> MAILTO=robert at rdlg.net
> DATE=`/bin/date +%w`
> OUTFILE="/etc/Packages.dump.week."$DATE".txt"
> 
> # Backup dpkg selections
> 0 12 * * *     root   /usr/bin/dpkg --get-selections > $OUTFILE
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> For some reason it's not properly setting $DATE and instead is trying to
> make OUTFILE="/etc/Packages.dump.week./bin/date +%w.txt"  which obviously
> wont' work.
> 
> I'm pretty sure I'm not smoking crack, what have I done wrong?


    The crontab files aren't shell scripts.  The variables being set are
being interpreted by crond, not bash, so command substitution won't
work.

    So, you'll probably need to call a wrapper script which will wet
DATE and then OUTFILE, and call /usr/bin/dpkg itself, instead of
directly through cron.

    Crack it is! ;-)

-- 
Daniel S. Cox
Internet Commerce Corporation
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