You've written a great little script. You've put in in /etc/cron.weekly so that it will get run every week. You wait until you're sure a week has passed and then check to see whether the script has run. It hasn't. You run it manually to test it. It works.

You wait another week. Once again the script hasn't run. You wonder what is wrong with your script? You google and find something like this which doesn't apply. You feel like pulling your hair out in frustration.

You have a look at your system's crontab:

# m h dom mon dow user  command
17 *    * * *   root    run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
25 6    * * *   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily
47 6    * * 7   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly
52 6    1 * *   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly

Hourly scripts are run at 17 minutes past the hour, daily scripts at 06.25 everyday, weekly ones at 06.47 on Sundays and monthly ones at 06.52 on the first day of the month. So why isn't your script running?

You see that it is run using run-parts. You check the man page for run-parts and you notice that there is a '--test' option that just prints the name of scripts to be run. You try it on your script. Your script isn't listed. Why does run-parts hate your script so much?

You scan down the man page. It says:

If the --lsbsysinit option is not given then the names must consist entirely of upper and lower case letters, digits, underscores, and hyphens.

Your read it again carefully. Upper and lower case letters, digits, underscores and hyphens doesn't include dots. But you've included a dot in your script. You always do, don't you?. After all, shell scripts always end in '.sh'. Right?

Well, not when they're run by run-parts. So, you change the name of your script from mysql-backup.sh to mysql-backup.

Phew! It works and the script is now run weekly.

Learn Shell Scripting

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