Backup script is being executed in cron job but no backup is being produced

Question

If I run my backup script manually from the command line it works fine. No issue backup is created. In the crontab log, I can see the entry for running the backup at 2:00 AM, /home/sgaddis/copy-production-db.sh:

Dec 23 01:01:01 mapehr anacron[11921]: Anacron started on 2019-12-23
Dec 23 01:01:01 mapehr anacron[11921]: Normal exit (0 jobs run)
Dec 23 01:01:01 mapehr run-parts(/etc/cron.hourly)[11923]: finished 0anacron
Dec 23 02:00:01 mapehr CROND[14869]: (sgaddis) CMD (sgaddis /bin/bash /home/sgaddis/copy-production-db.sh)
Dec 23 02:01:01 mapehr CROND[14934]: (root) CMD (run-parts /etc/cron.hourly)
Dec 23 02:01:01 mapehr run-parts(/etc/cron.hourly)[14934]: starting 0anacron
Dec 23 02:01:01 mapehr anacron[14943]: Anacron started on 2019-12-23

but when I look in the /home/sgaddis/backup there is no backup.

It should not be a permission issue since it is my home/backup folder. My account should have the right to dump the backup there as it does when I run the script manually. Any place else I should be looking for clues?

I went to https://linux4one.com/how-to-set-up-cron-job-on-centos-7/ to see if there was anything I left out in creating the cronjob

I searched this site was unable to find a question similar to this one. The cronjob is not hanging or not being executed. The closest I found was

  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44723154/using-cronjob-to-automatically-backup-mysql-files, 

but as I said earlier in my post I have already run the script from the command line and it works fine so the above post does not answer my question.

Searching this site

does not produce a similar question to the one that I have posted. If you know of a similar post please point it out and not just vote down my post.

The exact line is this

0 2 * * * root /bin/bash /home/sgaddis/copy-production-db.sh

==UPDATE==

This is the command that is in the log file today.

 mapehr CROND[21076]: (sgaddis) CMD (/bin/bash /home/sgaddis/copy-production-db.sh)

Now it is using my user account to launch the cron job.

Maybe my user account does not have permission to execute a cron job?

Answer 1

Hi and welcome to the community!

On first sight the page you used as a tutorial say to use crontab -e but then says you should put a user name in your cron entry. When using the crontab tool, there is no need for a user name in the cron entry, as the crontab invoked through the tool is run in user context anyway. If you provide the exact line you used in your configuration we might be able to correct this properly.

Nevertheless this is probably simply an issue in your cron entry. Try removing the username if present from your cron entry and give it just the timing configuration and the exact command you used manually like this:

0 0 * * * your-command /path/to/script.sh

Answer 2

From comments it is clear that you want to run the cron job as root.

You can schedule such a script in two ways:

1. Put it in the system's crontab in /etc/crontab. This crontab is a crontab file with an extra user field, like what you show in your question. I would not recommend this though as some Unix systems may manage this crontab by automatic means. Instead...
2. Put the job in the root user's crontab. You can edit the crontab of the root user with the command sudo crontab -e from you ordinary user account, if you have sudo rights. This crontab is the root user's "personal crontab", and it is handy for running your local scheduled jobs from that need root privileges.

Note that the environment that the script is being run in from cron may well be different from the environment that you run it from in an interactive shell. Differences may include what the current working directory is (write your script so that files are being copied to and from absolute paths), and what environment variables are set and to what values (variables set in your shell startup files will not be available; set these explicitly in the script instead).