Hi,

I have a script which does a tar and sends it to another server as backup.
Script is as below

# Locations to be backed up. Seperate by space
BACKUP_LOCATIONS=/repos/subversion

BACKUP_BASE_FOLDER=/bakpool
BACKUP_FILE_NAME_ROOT=svn-backup

START_TIME_DISP=`date`
START_TIME=`date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`
BACKUP_FILE=${BACKUP_BASE_FOLDER}/${BACKUP_FILE_NAME_ROOT}-${START_TIME}.tar

# Run the backup
/usr/bin/tar -cvf ${BACKUP_FILE} ${BACKUP_LOCATIONS}
#scp ${BACKUP_FILE} m1008366@57.5.198.208:/backup/svn/fops << PPASS
/usr/bin/scp ${BACKUP_FILE} m1008366@57.6.198.206:/backup/svn/fops << PPASS
intel2707
PPASS


When i run this scrip manually it gives back up of size 2862295040 however if i crontab it it just results in the size 38881280. my crontab settings are
1 11 * * 1-6 . /scripts/backup-script.sh
Please help....
Regards..
RG

Are you sure that same versions of tar is being used when run manually and via cron?

Tip:
Use -C option with scp for on the fly compress while transferring

Yes Matrix... same versions of tar are being used...... Iam really confused how come the same script will work perfectly when we run manually...
Regarding SCP no issues i can do that, thanks for the tip...
Can u please dig more and report me
thanks again

did you find out which all files are excluded when its ran from crontab??

Thanks vidyadhar ... Out of 200 directoried its is just able to tar 4 directories...it is stopping at folder by name trasaction with transactioid.txn files One more thing is that if i manually untar the 38 Mb back up i am getting an error
-rw-r--r-- www-data/root 61434 2009-01-29 19:07 repos/subversion/flightops/db/revs/2021
tar: Unexpected EOF in archive
tar: Unexpected EOF in archive
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
this will not come while untaring the 2.8GB tar file. It untars it without any issues...
Thanks..

For one thing, I would not use the `. /path/to/script` syntax. Put a first line in the script that says "#!/bin/ksh" or "#!/bin/bash" or whatever shell you use in your user environment. Then use `/path/to/script` as the syntax. That will at least ensure that your shell is the same in both user environment and cron.

You want to be looking for what might be different in the two environments.

For the moment, I assume we can ignore the scp, since you are not even getting the full tar file. Maybe comment out the scp and see what happens from cron.

Maybe add a line right after the tar line that does `echo "return code $?";`.

You don't get any output email from cron? (What it would do if an error message or other output was generated).

Thanks Choogendyk,
I placed #!/bin/bash, changed the `/path/to/script`, commented SCP and also i put in the return core it says " return code 2 "but no tar file has been created.. i dont know how to setup mail in Ubuntu... hep plz...