rsync using cron and ssh

[pietro2580]

Dear all,

I am trying to set up a backup system for my Ubuntu linux (8.04) laptop with a desktop linux machine (openSuse 9.x) using a combination of rsync, cron and ssh.
The folowwing rsync command is working ok when I run it in a terminal (as normal user):

rsync -avz -e "ssh -i /home/userid/sync/PCxxxx-rsync-key" /home/userid/wanteddir/ userid@pcyyyy:/home/userid/backup/wanteddir/

When I put this command in my crontab file (running crontab -e), the rsync command fails.

46 10 * * * rsync -avz -e "ssh -i /home/userid/sync/PCxxxx-rsync-key" /home/userid/wanteddir/ userid@pcyyyy:/home/userid/backup/wanteddir/

However, the cron-log-file tells me that the job is excuted:

Aug 28 10:18:01 PCxxxx /USR/SBIN/CRON[19650]: (userid) CMD (rsync -avz -e "ssh -i /home/userid/sync/PCxxxx-rsync-key" /home/userid/wanteddir/ userid@pcyyyy:/home/userid/backup/wanteddir/)

If there would be an error-message resulting from this cron-job, where can I find it? Apparently not in the file /var/log/cron.log? Also in /var/log/messages I cannot find any entry related with my cronjob

Thanx in advance
P.

[denniscox]

If there would be an error-message resulting from this cron-job, where can I find it?

cron can be run with a "-x" option

     -x debugflag[,...]
             Enable writing of debugging information to standard output.  One or more of the following comma-separated debugflag
             identifiers must be specified:

             bit   currently not used
             ext   make the other debug flags more verbose
             load  be verbose when loading crontab files
             misc  be verbose about miscellaneous one-off events
             pars  be verbose about parsing individual crontab lines
             proc  be verbose about the state of the process, including all of its offspring
             sch   be verbose when iterating through the scheduling algorithms
             test  trace through the execution, but do not perform any actions

[pietro2580]

Hi
Thanx for the suggestion.
However, what I did is put all my commands in a shell script and save the STDERR of this shell script. That pointed me to the solution. More info:
[ubuntu] Cron combined with ssh and rsync - Ubuntu Forums
HOWTO: SSH & Public Keys [Archive] - Ubuntu Forums

P.