I tried setting up a cron job for doing a nightly backup over the network,
and as far as I can tell, it just didn't run. crontab -l does show that
the job has been installed (no "you are not authorized" message). In other
Unix systems, I'm used to getting E-mail (via /var/mail) from the cron
daemon if there is a problem with a cron job, but this did not occur. How
can I get it to work (or debug it further)?
-- David

In article <z9vqg.6444$b8.5932@fe47.usenetserver.com>, "David Shochat"
<shochatd******.com> wrote:

> I tried setting up a cron job for doing a nightly backup over the network,
> and as far as I can tell, it just didn't run. crontab -l does show that
> the job has been installed (no "you are not authorized" message). In other
> Unix systems, I'm used to getting E-mail (via /var/mail) from the cron
> daemon if there is a problem with a cron job, but this did not occur. How
> can I get it to work (or debug it further)?

I think the mail is sent, but to the UNIX user, not the Mail user. Check
'mail' in the console (like Terminal).

I use lines like ("\" indicating broken line, which should be pasted together)
5 4 * * * /usr/bin/rsync -aEv --delete /Users/ /Volumes/\
External/Users/ > /Users/myname/Backup/backupUsersExternalSCSI.txt 2>&1
Use 'rsync' with Mac OS X.4.7 or later. :-)

In addition, the computer must be awaken from sleep during backup, which
can be done in System Preference/Energy Saver/Options.

--
Hans Aberg

In article <z9vqg.6444$b8.5932@fe47.usenetserver.com>, "David Shochat"
<shochatd******.com> wrote:

> I tried setting up a cron job for doing a nightly backup over the network,
> and as far as I can tell, it just didn't run. crontab -l does show that
> the job has been installed (no "you are not authorized" message). In other
> Unix systems, I'm used to getting E-mail (via /var/mail) from the cron
> daemon if there is a problem with a cron job, but this did not occur. How
> can I get it to work (or debug it further)?

I think the mail is sent, but to the UNIX user, not the Mail user. Check
'mail' in the console (like Terminal).

I use lines like ("\" indicating broken line, which should be pasted together)
5 4 * * * /usr/bin/rsync -aEv --delete /Users/ /Volumes/\
External/Users/ > /Users/myname/Backup/backupUsersExternalSCSI.txt 2>&1
Use 'rsync' with Mac OS X.4.7 or later. :-)

In addition, the computer must be awaken from sleep during backup, which
can be done in System Preference/Energy Saver/Options.

--
Hans Aberg