The way you posted it made me think of <newline> chars.

Usage of cp and the host part missing in the target path lends itself to the assumption you have NFS exports mounted? Sure it's correctly mounted?


Would be helpful to see the $NOW variable, no? There's definitely no time limit on variables. Perhaps there are no files with $NOW?
That script is overly complicated and impossible to read and digest.
- Don't run several sed scripts repeatedly on identical files - make that one script. What are those double single quotes for?
- Don't use lengthy path names - put those into punchy variables.
- Don't pipe text into cat with a redirected stdout - redirect immediately. What is that single lonely cat for?


Definitely not. Permissions are OS / file system features, not shells'.