crontab -e not running backup tasks.

[irishfoguser]

I am trying to setup a task to backup \images\ to a usb drive but i cant get it to work.

I am using a program called grysnc and i have setup a task called images to do the backing up. it works grsync program.

i have setup a crontab as follows but using the command crontab -e i am using Unbuntu 14.04

00 02 * * 0-6 grsync -e images
that doesnt work

I tried adding in some logging, bu t that doesnt work either.
00 02 * * 0-6 grsync -e images >> /home/myusername/logs/backup.log 2>&1

Thanks and Happy christmas all.

[Tom Elliott]

your crontab should be:

00 02 * * * grsync -e /images >>/home/myusername/logs/backup.log 2>&1

[Tom Elliott]

Also, 0-6 on the DOW is the same as Everyday so you can literally just run * for that field.

0 is the same as 00 and 02 is the same as 2 so you can literally use:

0 2 * * * for the crontab itself.

[irishfoguser]

Thanks tom. made the suggested changes and ill see what happens tonight.

[Tom Elliott]

Your backup task is named images?

What’s the actual backup task look like?

[irishfoguser]

@Tom-Elliott rsync -r -n -p -o -g -v --progress --delete --ignore-existing -i -s /images/ /media/myusername/5E8D585C1892608A/images

[Wayne Workman]

You have to path to the executable or include PATH in the crontab itself.

so if you ran command -v grsync it would give you the full path, you’d use this full path instead of just grsync. Or you could just stick the path at the top of the crontab file. echo $PATH and then take the output and put it into line 1 of the crontab as a variable like PATH="put the path output here"

Read through this, they may make better sense than me. Plus I’m tired. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2388087/how-to-get-cron-to-call-in-the-correct-paths