Crontab

[atricity]

I haven't used crontab before so I may be making a simple mistake.

I'm trying to set up a cron that backs up a folder every day. For testing purposes I've just set it to run every hour on a particular minute.

(MYUSERNAME is my account name, I know I have that correct)

My home directory is: /hsphere/local/home/MYUSERNAME
I created the folder backups so that location is: /hsphere/local/home/MYUSERNAME/backups/

So in crontab, under H-sphere, I set:
Minute: 0
Hour: *
Day of Month: *
Month: *
Day of Week: *

Command:

tar -czf /hsphere/local/home/MYUSERNAME/backups/$(date +%Y%m%d)web-backup.tgz /hsphere/local/home/MYUSERNAME/container.MYDOMAIN.net/wp-content/

I got that command from someone else, so maybe there is a problem with that?

Any help appreciated!

[kb0kqa]

What you have will run every hour (each time that minute=0). You need to also set hour to something (like 0).

I'm also not clear if you have the file actually formatted correctly or not as what you have there is not the file format.

This is what a line looks like:

55 3 * * * rm a.file

This will run "rm a.file" every day at 3:55am. Each command is on a separate line, and each one starts with the time/day that it should run.

[atricity]

Ok I just tried the following code and it worked! So it must be the date part that is off:

tar -cWPpf /hsphere/local/home/MYUSERNAME/backups/web-backup.tar.gz /hsphere/local/home/MYUSERNAME/container.MYDOMAIN.net/wp-content/

EDIT: I did a bit more research and messing around and found that the % sign is interpreted as a new line unless you escape it with a backslash. So this now works:

tar -cWPpf /hsphere/local/home/MYUSERNAME/backups/$(date +\%Y\%m\%d).web-backup.tar.gz /hsphere/local/home/MYUSERNAME/container.MYDOMAIN.net/wp-content/