Probably working too hard for this cron question

[Kurt Buff]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 15:02, Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:44:29 -0700, Kurt Buff <kurt.buff at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Per the handbook, I added
>>
>>      SHELL=/bin/sh
>>
>> to crontab, and I also added
>>
>>      #!/bin/sh
>>
>> as the first line in the script
>>
>> But, while a file is being created, it's just
>>
>>      /root/-external1.txt
>>
>> not
>>
>>      /root/2011-06-13-external1.txt
>
> Just a wild guess: How about adding {} to the variable
> identifiers? There are some restrictions in how far a
> character following the variable name will be treated
> as a "stop sign", e. g. variable x, literal y, and you
> have $xy which won't work, but $x_y may work, so you
> use ${x}y to make sure the name is properly scoped.
>
> Refering to your original script:
>
> #!/bin/sh
> dt=`/bin/date "+%Y-%m-%d"`
> /bin/date > /root/${dt}-external1.txt
> /usr/local/bin/curl -K /root/urls.txt >> /root/${dt}-external1.txt
> /bin/date >> /root/${dt}-external1.txt
>
> Could you try that?

Can, and did, and it works like a champ. That solves the last issue.

<snip>

My thank to you Polytropon, and to those who replied privately.

Now all I have to do is pin down whether the name resolution slowness
is in our firewall, or web filter, or external router, or perhaps
something at the ISP.

Kurt