Bash port auto upgrading script in cron doesn't work properly?

Question

I've been recently try to write a script to automate checks for new version of ports and software installed on my FreeBSD server. This script is added to root's crontab and fires daily. If I run it from sudo /path/to/script it goes forward decently sending mail with content on my email address. If it's run by cron I get an empty mail. I think that the reason might be that while update sometimes window appears (from make config i think) with compilation options, but I might be wrong. Here's the script:

#!/usr/local/bin/bash
# DIRECTORIES SETUP
script_path_dir="/tmp"
working_dir="$script_path_dir/portsupgradescript"

# FILES SETUP
mail_file="$working_dir/mail.txt"
mail_address="MY_MAIL_ADDRESS"
mail_subject="Daily update"
pm_out="portmaster_log.txt"
pu_out="portupgrade_log.txt"


# START

if [ ! -d "$script_path_dir" ];
 then
  echo "Script base directory set does not exist. Creating..."
  mkdir $script_path_dir
 else
  echo "Script base directory set exists. OK"
fi

if [ ! -d "$working_dir" ];
 then
  echo "Script working directory set does not exist. Creating..."
  mkdir $working_dir
 else
  echo "Script working directory set exists. OK"
fi

if [ "$(ls -A $working_dir)" ]; then
 echo "Script working directory is empty. OK"
else
 echo "Script working directory is not empty. Cleaning..."
 rm -rf $working_dir/*
fi


rm -rf $pm_out
rm -rf $pu_out
rm -rf $mail_file

/usr/sbin/portsnap fetch update && \
/usr/local/sbin/portmaster -L --index-only | egrep '(ew|ort) version|total install' > $pm_out

linecount=`wc -l $pm_out | awk {'print $1'}`
if [ "$linecount" != "0" ]
then
 echo "Master file log not empty. Concatenating..."
 cat $pm_out >> $mail_file
 else
  echo "Master file log empty... ( x )  "
fi


portupgrade -aqyP -l $pu_out

upg_linecount=`wc -l $pu_out`
if [ "$upg_linecount" != "0" ]
 then
  echo "Upgrade file log not empty. Concatenating..."
  cat $pu_out >> $mail_file
 else
  echo "Upgrade file log empty... ( x ) "
 fi


echo "Seding mail report..."
 cat $mail_file | mail -s "$mail_subject" "$mail_address"

Is there any way to select defaults on "make config" window so this would be not a showstopper? Or maybe I should run this script sudoed in user's cron, not root's?

Answer 1

Auto-upgrading from cron is kind of a bad idea. You should really read /usr/ports/UPDATING in case there's some sort of manual action that needs to be taken. I'm sure this probably won't be very popular, sorry, but it's true. There's a reason UPDATING exists.

As far as your script goes, you can define BATCH=yes in /etc/make.conf and you won't be prompted for configuration. You may also But that doesn't mean your upgrades will go well.

Answer 2

If running portsnap from cron, you should really use the cron action, instead of fetch. It sleeps for a random amount of time between 1 second and an hour, before connecting to the server. This is intended to reduce the likelihood of a large number of clients coming online at the same time and hammering the servers.

portupgrade has an option --batch, which aims to process all ports in a fully automated way, so should accept the defaults or the results of a previous invocation of make config. This might be what you are looking for.

Answer 3

I've seen the defaults selected in a make config as:

yes '' | make config

yes loops forever printing all its arguments separated with a space and follows them with a '\n'. If no arguments are given, it prints a 'y' followed by a newline every iteration. Here, we've given it an empty argument to cause it to simply print the newlines, which is like hitting enter to accept all the defaults from the from make config prompts.