Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I'm trying to execute a job on the last day of every month, for which i'm using the following code in my Korn shell script :

if [[ `date +%d -d tomorrow` != 01 ]];
then
echo allowed only on last day of month. Today is `date +%d` >t.stm
echo Tomorrow is `date +%d -d tomorrow` >s.stm
exit 0
fi
...
....
.... (actual code to be executed)


Here is the crontab entry for it :

2,32 6-10 28-31 * * /intl_cim/acq_mdl1/cms/prod/global/scripts/trigger.ksh prod > /dev/null 2>&1

Strange enough, when i execute this script from the command prompt it works fine, but when it is executed by the cron, the file s.stm and t.stm show the same date. Which means it is not calculating Date -d tomorrow.

Can you please help me understand why this would happen. Here is what uname -a on my machine says :

SunOS sppmd541 5.10 IDR_139180-01 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-15000

Thanks a lot.

Solaris' "/usr/bin/date" does not support '-d tomorrow' option - this is GNU-ism.
You must have the GNU 'date' installed under /usr/local/bin (most likely) and your $PATH env variable has /usr/local/bin BEFORE /usr/bin.
Try specifying the the FULL path to the GNU date in your script.
Also Solaris' crontab does not support the 'day-day' or 'hour-hour' syntax - this is also GNUism - see 'man crontab' for description.
For further cron/crontab issues refer to the crontab FAQ.

When using shell scripts within cron, it is always a good idea to hard code the full path to each and every utility i.e. /usr/bin/cp, /usr/local/bin/date, etc.

On a HP-UX system anything after the format string in the unix date command is ignored. Though this is SunOS, it might explain why the script appears to work without error messages.

Code:

date +%d fred bloggs
30

date +%d -d tomorrow
30

BTW. Solaris crontab does support 'day-day' 'hour-hour' syntax.

I stand corrected - I thought of 'every' syntax: every 5 minutes: '*/5'

But the script works correctly from the command line, and the date command is executed as expected. e.g. if i run it from command line on 30th april, the condition Date +%d -d tommrrow != '01' is false and script executes further. But when it is called from the cron on 30th april, this condition becomes true because 'date +%d -d tommorrow' returns 30 instead of 01.


Why would the same command that returns 01 on the command line will return 30 when called from cron ?

Please show the exact SunOS command which produces tomorrow's day number. The posts include three spellings of the word "tomorrow", but I don't think that SunOS is interpreting anything on the command line after

Code:

date +%d