Cron problems

[Ridiculous]

Hello,

I am having a promblem with cron in Fedora 8.

I am trying to make cron do a job (the scheduling is not the issue) which tars a users home folder and any file associated with that user in the /var folder.

I keep getting error mail sent and I do not know where I am going wrong. I tried the command out in BASH shell and it worked. I even made cron use BASH insted of /bin/sh...

Here is my code I put into crontab -e:

SHELL=/bin/bash

15 4 25 * * tar -cvf "arnold-`date +%Y-%m-%d`.tar" /home/arnold && tar -rvf arnold-'date +%Y-%m-%d'.tar `find /var -user arnold`

What I think is happening here is, is tars /home/arnold with the name "arnold(current date).tar" and if that is successful is finds all files with the owner arnold in the /var and appends them to the archive...

and this is what cron sends to /var/spool/mail/root

From root@localhost.localdomain  Wed Mar  4 08:59:01 2009
Return-Path: <root@localhost.localdomain>
Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
        by localhost.localdomain (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id n24Dx1qn002941
        for <root@localhost.localdomain>; Wed, 4 Mar 2009 08:59:01 -0500
Received: (from root@localhost)
        by localhost.localdomain (8.14.2/8.14.2/Submit) id n24Dx1HQ002940;
        Wed, 4 Mar 2009 08:59:01 -0500
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 08:59:01 -0500
Message-Id: <200903041359.n24Dx1HQ002940@localhost.localdomain>
From: root@localhost.localdomain (Cron Daemon)
To: root@localhost.localdomain
Subject: Cron <root@localhost> tar -cvf /var/local/backup "arnold'date +
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Auto-Submitted: auto-generated
X-Cron-Env: <SHELL=/bin/bash>
X-Cron-Env: <HOME=/root>
X-Cron-Env: <PATH=/usr/bin:/bin>
X-Cron-Env: <LOGNAME=root>
X-Cron-Env: <USER=root>

/bin/bash: -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `" '
/bin/bash: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file

I don't know why cron sees an EOF... It is eluding me... I'm sure it is the date command but I don't know any other to allow to input the current date into the filename (I need to have the date in the filename).

I know I could use the --backup option for tar but I want to get it working before that. I am sure it is the date command that is screwing things up.

Any help would be appreciated!

[sed_addictive]

hmmm... looks like a typo

15 4 25 * * tar -cvf "arnold-`date +%Y-%m-%d`.tar" /home/arnold && tar -rvf arnold-'date +%Y-%m-%d'.tar `find /var -user arnold`

the escape sequence character is not correct, tar -rvf arnold-`date +%Y-%m-%d` should fix this

[bigtomrodney]

The most common issue with cron jobs is the minimal $PATH. I see above the $PATH is PATH=/usr/bin:/bin

I'd check the location of tar,date and find on your system to make sure they are somewhere cron can find them, perhaps prefixing each command with its own full path.

[Ridiculous]

no the escape characters i wrote were wrong, I meant to use ` instead of '

I figured it out. The % sign in cron makes a carrage return I needed to put a backslash infront of them to make it not see it as thus.

Thanks anyway.