Script does not run from crontab

Asked Jan 18 '19 at 19:03

Active Jan 18 '19 at 19:03

Viewed 18 times

I run a script from the command line like so:

/home/user/data-transfer/swap/fetch_swap_swavint.sh >>/home/user/data-transfer/logs/swap_swavint.`date "+%Y%m%d%H%M"`.log 2>&1

Everything works as expected. However when launching from the crontab like so:

0 19 * * * /home/user/data-transfer/swap/fetch_swap_swavint.sh >>/home/user/data-transfer/logs/swap_swavint.`date "+%Y%m%d%H%M"`.log 2>&1

I get the following errors:

/bin/sh: -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching ``'
/bin/sh: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file

If it works from the command line shouldn't it work from crontab. Do I miss some escaping or quotes somewhere?

Thanks for pointers.

asked Jan 18 '19 at 19:03

user1472672

I think crontab uses sh, not bash, so the commands have to be legal sh syntax. I could be wrong, but it is Friday... – Gem Taylor Jan 18 '19 at 19:06
You have to escape `%` in crontab entries, see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16238460/why-percent-signs-do-not-work-in-crontab – Benjamin W. Jan 18 '19 at 19:08
Save yourself a lot of trouble by putting the command in a file – that other guy Jan 18 '19 at 19:09
This is, by the way, nicely covered in the excellent [cron tag wiki](https://stackoverflow.com/tags/cron/info). – Benjamin W. Jan 18 '19 at 19:10

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