Sstrhsrtj

With this cron script I am trying to get Rsync to work

*/1 * *    * * /root/backup.sh  `date +today/%M`

And a shell script as the one below

#!/bin/bash -x

PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin

REMOTE="REMOTEADDRESS"

RSYNC=/usr/bin/rsync

Comment: This works

$RSYNC -aqz --exclude-from '/home/root/backups/backup-exclude.txt' /var/www/html $REMOTE:backups/

Comment: This fails

$RSYNC -aqz  --exclude-from '/home/root/backups/backup-exclude.txt' /var/www/html $REMOTE:$1/

I am unable to understand why the passed parameter does not get passed correctly to the script. In the log everything looks as it should.

UPDATE
The reason for the cron to pass the parameter and not have it in the script is to have a backup schedule that allows to have :
- a backup each hour overwritten each day
- a backup each day overwritten each month
- a persistent Backup each month

The error when passing the parameter is that RSync can not mkdir on the remote server. It can with any static line. The log shows the correct directory passed when using the current cron.

You must ensure that the directory where you are trying to copy to (the dest/dir) exists in the remote computer:

rsync -aqz ./ user@host:dest/dir

At minimum, all the directories (except the last one) should already exist.
That is the same behavior as mkdir: mkdir will only create the last directory (by default, the -p option can change that).
That is: rsync will fail unless /home/user/dest/dir exists on the remote computer.

That is with relative directories.

The same also happens with absolute directories (ones that start with an /):

rsync -aqz ./ user@host:/home/user/dest/dir

The exact same rule but the directory is not assumed to be at the user home directory but could be anywhere (the user must have permissions to write to it, of course).

In additional testing I found that if rsync is going to use a directory like:

newdir/testdir

At least the directory newdir must exist. That is exactly the same as mkdir does. A mkdir newdir/testdir will fail if there is no newdir dir.

I tested it with the same script as you report:

• using with a fixed dir,


• a given dir on a parameter,


• a given dir on the script $1 parameter


• all the above repeated with and without cron.

In all cases, missing the initial directory of a two parts directory gets rsync to fail.