cron job

[Murugs]

Hello All
I tried setting up a cron job. I am running w2k server and have installed cygwin.
In a cygwin shell I issued crontab -e and vi editor popped up.
0 21 * * * pg_dump testdb>backup

This command makes a backup of a database testdb daily at 9 PM. But when I came in today I am not able to find my file.
If i do a ps -ef | grep cron
I see /usr/bin/crontab running
where I am going wrong?

 

[sleipnir214]

It is likely because you user's environment variables, most notably, PATH, are not available to the cron job.

Use full path names everywhere. ______________________________________________________________________
TANSTAAFL!

 

[Murugs]

I have redited the file and given like this
20 11 * * * /usr/bin/pg_dump testdb>/usr/bin/backup
still no luck..

any ideas
regards
MP

 

[ProbablyDown]

Why no try adding your commands to a shell script, then call the shell script from cron.
i.e:
------------------------------
! /bin/ksh
# clean_tmp.sh -- scour the old temp files from /tmp that
# belong to the user myuser.

thislist="/tmp/clean_tmp.list"

ls -l /tmp | grep "myuser" | awk '{print $9}' > $thislist

for i in `cat $thislist`
do
rm -r /tmp/$i
done
----------------------------------
Then, add it to the crontab:
45 23 * * * ~/bin/clean_tmp.sh

In this example, user "myuser"'s files get deleted at 11:45pm every night.