crontab question involving cvsup
epilogue
epilogue at allstream.net
Thu Aug 26 00:42:23 PDT 2004
On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 00:07:26 -0700
Joshua Tinnin <krinklyfig at spymac.com> wrote:
> OK, I have searched the archives, and I can't find that my question has
> been answered previously, but please forgive me if that's incorrect.
>
> I'm using (or rather trying to use) cron to update my ports tree daily.
> I've tried several different combinations without success, and lately
> this is what I have in my crontab file:
>
> /usr/local/bin/cvsup -g -L 2 /home/krinklyfig/supfiles/ports-supfile
> && /usr/local/bin/portindex && /usr/local/sbin/portsdb -u
>
> It runs as root once a day. What appears to be happening is that the
> cvsup is happening, but portindex is not, and because of the latter
> portsdb -u doesn't either. The reason I know cvsup is working is
> because portindex indicates that the ports tree has been updated if I
> run it manually later, but running portversion before manually running
> portindex will not indicate any changes. The cron log doesn't show
> anything but the commands being executed. So, my question is: is this
> type of command valid, or should each command be separate? Or is it not
> working for some other reason?
man cron gives:
crontab [-u user] file
'file' being the important part, methinks. ;)
what you might want to do, is simply write a shell script and feed that
into your crontab. in case you're not sure how to make a script, it is
very simple and google will return many tutorials.
in a nutshell, you put the commands you want into a file, make that file
executable (chmod), and away you go.
the first line of a shell script has an obligatory format and invokes the
shell that will be used.
#!/bin/sh << the leading # is required
/usr/local/bin/cvsup -L 2 /foo/path/to/your/ports-supfile;
# comments are allowed
portindex;
exit
note: you might also prefer to end commands with && rather than ;
i'm new to scripting myself so please forgive my feeble explanation.
about the commands which you are planning to include, why the 'portsdb -u'?
is that not doing essentially the same work as 'portindex' ?
(http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/portindex/)
anyhow. hope this helps.
cheers,
epi
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