redirecting cron output into script then into file.

[vortmax]

I'm using cron and fetchmail to poll a mail server on a regular basis. For sake of redundant record keeping, I need to log the output of the fetchmail command every time it is run. This is not hard, as all I need to do is redirect it to a log file with a >> in the cron line.

My issue is that this method produces the file I want, but there are no time or date stamps. I wrote a small script in perl that does nothing but take a line as input, append a time stamp to the front, then print the combined line. So in theory, all I need to do is pass the output of fetchmail into this perl script then redirect its output into a log file.

So now I have 2 questions:

1. When I pass the output of fetchmail (on the command line) into this script (addts) with:

fetchmail >(addts)

I get this error:

helpdesk@helpdesk:~/tmp$ fetchmail >(addts)
2008-04-25 14:20:301 :Enter password for helpdesk@/dev/fd/63:

entering the password I get:

fetchmail: couldn't find canonical DNS name of /dev/fd/63 (/dev/fd/63): Name or service not known
fetchmail: Query status=11 (DNS)

I assume this has something to do with the shell fetchmail is being run in? Just calling fetchmail works fine.

2. I can redirect the output of fetchmail into the addts script, but how can I then redirect that output into a log file all on one line? Would it be something like:

fetchmail >(addts) > logfile

 

[SamBones]

Wouldn't that be...

fetchmail | addts >> logfile

You can also do it with just a function...

#!/bin/ksh

function time_stamper {
   while read LINE
   do
      print "$(/bin/date '+%Y%m%d:%H:%M:%S'): $LINE"
   done
}

fetchmail | time_stamper >> logfile

 

[vortmax]

thanks,
that worked. I originally tried using the pipe, but it would break with the perl script. Switched it over the bash script and it's working well. Thanks.