UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

i am trying to figure a way to email my access_log twice a month to myself right before the system zeros it.

using crontab is the way to go, but the command to get mail to do the job is my problem.

#-------------------------------------------
#0-59 0-23 1-31 1-12 0-6 (0=Sunday)
#min hour date month day command
#-------------------------------------------

* 0 * 15 * * cat home/aherbel/logs/access_log.resolved | tar access.tar | gzip access.tar.gz | mail -s ",subject,email@domain.com

* 0 * 30 * * cat home/aherbel/logs/access_log.resolved | tar access.tar | gzip access.tar.gz | mail -s ",subject,email@domain.com


i got most of this from the FAQ's, but got this error.


/bin/sh: -c: line 2: syntax error: unexpected end of file

thanks

When you use pipe [ | ] you must work with stdin and/or stdout, not filenames. At the second, you didn't write tar command. At the third - why do you want to tar 1 file ?

At the fourth - "mail" don't send you compressed file as attachement but as message body. You have to use some combination of the MIME command to create attachement. Better is to use "mutt"

Your command pipe should be as folows:

cat logfile | gzip logfile.gz; mutt -s "logfile" -a logfile.gz email@domain.com

also instead of having two lines in the crontab, you could just have one. (although two is fine)

* 0 * 15,30 * * cat logfile | gzip logfile.gz; mutt -s "logfile" -a logfile.gz email@domain.com

#-------------------------------------------
#0-59 0-23 1-31 1-12 0-6 (0=Sunday)
#min hour date month day command
#-------------------------------------------


59 23 14 * * * metasend -b -t email@domain.com -s "Logs" -mtext/plain -f ~/logs/access_log.resolved

59 23 30 * * * metasend -b -t email@domain.com -s "Logs" -mtext/plain -f ~/logs/access_log.resolved

This works except for reading the file when i get it. it sends three separate parts and i can't figure out how to combine the parts and decode. i looked at the source and it appears to be rich text.