Cronjob not executing the Shell Script completely

Question

This is Srikanth from Hyderabad.

I the Linux Administrator in one of the corporate company. We have a squid server, So i prepared a Backup squid server, so that when LIVE Squid server goes down i can put the backup server into LIVE.

My squid servers are configured with Centos 5.5. I have prepared a script to take backup of all configuration files in /etc/squid/ of LIVE server to the backup server. i.e It will copy all files from Live server's /etc/squid/ to backup server's /etc/squid/

Here's the script saved as squidbackup.sh in the directory /opt/ with permission 755(rwxr-xr-x)

#! /bin/sh
username="<username>"
password="<password>"
host="Server IP"

expect -c "
spawn /usr/bin/scp -r <username>@Server IP:/etc/squid /etc/
expect {
        "*password:*"{
        send $password\r;
        interact;
                     }
   eof{
  exit
      }
}

** Kindly note that this will be executed in the backup server that will check for the user which is mentioned in the script. I have created a user in the live server and given the same in the script too.

When i execute this command using the below command

[root@localhost ~]# sh /opt/squidbackup.sh

Everything works fine till now, this script downloads all the files from the directory /etc/squid/ of LIVE server to the location /etc/squid/ of Backup server

Now the problem raises, If i set this in crontab like below or with other timings

50 23 * * * sh /opt/squidbackup.sh

Dont know what's wrong, it is not downloading all files. i.e Cronjob is downloading only few files from /etc/squid/ of LIVE server to the /etc/squid/ of backup server.

**Only few files are downloaded when cron executes the script, If i run this script manually then it is downloading all files perfectly with out any errors or warnings.

If you have any more questions, Please go ahead to post it.

Now i kindly request to give if any solutions are available.

Please Please, Thank you in advance.

thanks for your interest. I have tried what you have said, it show like below, but previously i use to get the same output to mail of the User in the squid backup server.

Even in cron logs it show the same, but i was not able to understand what was the exact error from the below lines.

Please note that only few files are getting downloaded with cron.

spawn /usr/bin/scp -r <username>@ServerIP:/etc/squid /etc/
<username>@ServerIP's password:

Kindly check if you can suggest any thing else.

You have a username and password in clear text in a world-readable script. That's a Really Bad Idea. You should set up passwordless ssh; create public and private keys in the $HOME/.ssh directory for the account that executes the script, and configure $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys on the remote system. It's simplest to set up a private key with no passphrase -- which means the private key file must be kept secure. (It should be possible to set up a private key with a passphrase, and let the cron job use ssh-agent, but that gets a bit complicated.) — Keith Thompson
– Keith Thompson, Commented Feb 20, 2012 at 23:31

souser · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-20 23:13:10Z

1

Try the simple options first. Capture the stdout and stderr as shown below. These files should point to the problem.
Looking at the script, you need to specify the location of expect. That could be an issue.

50 23 * * * sh /opt/squidbackup.sh >/tmp/cronout.log 2>&1

answered Feb 20, 2012 at 23:13

souser

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