crontab question involving cvsup

[epilogue]

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 00:07:26 -0700
Joshua Tinnin <krinklyfig at spymac.com> wrote:

> OK, I have searched the archives, and I can't find that my question has 
> been answered previously, but please forgive me if that's incorrect.
> 
> I'm using (or rather trying to use) cron to update my ports tree daily. 
> I've tried several different combinations without success, and lately 
> this is what I have in my crontab file:
> 
> /usr/local/bin/cvsup -g -L 2 /home/krinklyfig/supfiles/ports-supfile 
> && /usr/local/bin/portindex && /usr/local/sbin/portsdb -u
> 
> It runs as root once a day. What appears to be happening is that the 
> cvsup is happening, but portindex is not, and because of the latter 
> portsdb -u doesn't either. The reason I know cvsup is working is 
> because portindex indicates that the ports tree has been updated if I 
> run it manually later, but running portversion before manually running 
> portindex will not indicate any changes. The cron log doesn't show 
> anything but the commands being executed. So, my question is: is this 
> type of command valid, or should each command be separate? Or is it not 
> working for some other reason?

man cron gives:

crontab [-u user] file

'file' being the important part, methinks.   ;)

what you might want to do, is simply write a shell script and feed that
into your crontab.  in case you're not sure how to make a script, it is
very simple and google will return many tutorials.

in a nutshell, you put the commands you want into a file, make that file
executable (chmod), and away you go.

the first line of a shell script has an obligatory format and invokes the
shell that will be used.

#!/bin/sh                  << the leading # is required
/usr/local/bin/cvsup -L 2 /foo/path/to/your/ports-supfile;
# comments are allowed
portindex;
exit

note: you might also prefer to end commands with && rather than ;

i'm new to scripting myself so please forgive my feeble explanation.

about the commands which you are planning to include, why the 'portsdb -u'?
is that not doing essentially the same work as 'portindex' ?

(http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/portindex/)

anyhow.  hope this helps.


cheers,
epi