DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

Hi all,

dkl... I have added your suggestions to the improvements and it is working of sorts. 

There are a couple of issues however. Only one folder is being created in the rsync_backup folder (a new folder is ment to be created for each day.. right?).

All that is coming up at the moment is one folder with the date string (as per the code), not the actual date.   No other folders are created for the next day. I suspect it may be an issue with the ' or "'s in the wrong place.  Can you see what may be wrong?

Cheers
Chumby

Hi dkl,

Thatsnks for that.

This is the line in the tut that I can't get the date bit working... tried the ' and "s the other way also... can you see a problem below?

/bin/echo "5 2 * * * /mnt/HD_a2/ffp/bin/rsync -av --delete  --backup --backup-dir=../backup_rsync_save/`date +%Y-%m-%d` /mnt/HD_a2/* /mnt/HD_b2/rsync_save >> /mnt/HD_a2/ffp/log/rsync.last.log 2>&1" >> $CRONTXT

Cheers
Chumby

I think that evaluation of `date...` might be the issue (PATH and/or 'quote' management). Anyway, I don't like to put anything but simple code in the crontab. So let's do it simple and clean (I hope). The way I would recommend is to make a separate script (call it what you want), mine is /mnt/HD_a2/fun_plug.d/bin/synchronise.sh

So my crontab is

32 2 * * * /usr/sbin/rtc -s
30 2 2 * * /usr/sbin/rtc -c
59 1 * * * /usr/sbin/daylight &
5 2 * * * /mnt/HD_a2/fun_plug.d/bin/synchronise.sh

And synchronize.sh (must be executable, of course) should look like:

#!/bin/sh
#
# synchronize folders between Volume_1 and Volume_2
# nightly script run by crontab
export PATH=/mnt/HD_a2/fun_plug.d/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

echo `date` > /mnt/HD_a2/fun_plug.d/log/rsync.last.log
rsync -rlptDv --delete --exclude=<path-to-exclude>  --backup --backup-dir=/mnt/HD_b2/backup_rsync_save/`date +%Y-%m-%d` /mnt/HD_a2/* /mnt/HD_b2/rsync_save >> /mnt/HD_a2/fun_plug.d/log/rsync.last.log 2>&1

# clean backups
find /mnt/HD_b2/backup_rsync_save -type d -name "20[0-9]*-[0-9]*-[0-9]*" -mtime +60 | xargs rm -rf

Hope this helps

yes it is. This was described through an earlier post. You can decide how long you want to keep your "oldies" this way...

Again, this works on funplug 1.03 (I'm still on this old version). If some folder names (/mnt/HD_a2/fun_plug.d/bin,  /mnt/HD_a2/fun_plug.d/log, ...) have been changed in ffp, it must be adapted!

Opps, wrong thread. Sorry

Last edited by Loose Gravel (2009-05-29 18:10:42)

I see that you have changed the code to now use a rsync_save folder, I have been running on an older script... This is a nice addition.

One request if possible, could you also provide some code like dlk has in his seperate script to wipe out files & folders in the rsync_save folder that are older then a certain date or number of days so this folder does not get out of control and require manual maintenance... i.e. each day it does a scan for files older then 30 days and deletes permanently?

Last edited by kring (2009-08-07 15:06:26)

I have to thank you again Chumby for this idea and everyone else who has contributed. I've been using it for quite awhile with FFP v1.3 and had the original editcron.sh back in 2007. I prefer this code over what is currently used. Now, this has worked flawless for me until now. I've upgraded to FFP v1.5 and I decided to use dkl's method having the rsync code separate from the editcron.sh. The only problem is that the syncfiles.sh script that I made wont' execute via the crontab. It does work, though, I have to manually run it. I'm a newbie when it comes to linux scripting. What am I doing wrong? Is it a problem with FFP v1.5?

/mnt/HD_a2/ffp/start/editcron.sh

#!/bin/sh

CRONTXT=/mnt/HD_a2/crontab.tx

/bin/crontab -l > $CRONTXT

/bin/echo "0 6 * * * /mnt/HD_a2/ffp/bin/syncfiles.sh" >> $CRONTXT

/bin/crontab $CRONTXT

/bin/rm $CRONTXT

/mnt/HD_a2/ffp/bin/syncfiles.sh

#!/bin/sh

/mnt/HD_a2/ffp/bin/rsync -rlptDv --delete /mnt/HD_a2 /mnt/HD_b2 >/mnt/HD_a2/ffp/log/rsync.last.log 2>&1

*EDIT*
It works now!

Last edited by psykad (2009-08-10 06:10:06)

Hi, thanks to people that wrote this script, and for providing the tutorial, etc.

I am new to all this, and struggling a little. If some kind soul could help it would be much appreciated.

When I look at ffp.log, there is an error in the last part:

/ffp/start/editcron.sh ...
/ffp/start/editcron.sh: line 1: #!/bin/sh: not found

And consequently my crontab -l results are wrong, but I do have 4 listings rather than 3. I have managed to get rysnc working manually though, and successfully copied files between drives this morning.

Crontab -l results:

59 1 * * * /usr/sbin/daylight&
30 2 * * * /usr/sbin/stime&
32 2 * * * /usr/sbin/rtc -s
30 2 2 * * /usr/sbin/rtc -c

I'm using ffp 0.5 and Firmaware V1.09.

I created the editcron.sh file via notepad++ because I had problems with the vi editor. I chmod' a bunch of files in /ffp/start/ to 777 so I could write to the files direct from notepad++. Not sure if that was wise? But at least mediatomb still works after having files edited via notepad++.

Anyhow, I am stuck, as I don't understand the error in the ffp.log, so I can't get the cron job working.

Any guidance much appreaicted.

I have a slightly different and yet slightly similar situation.  My editcron script does not error out:

* /ffp/start/editcron.sh ...
*  OK

And my rsync jobs finish just fine:

sent 132101211 bytes  received 7427 bytes  727871.28 bytes/sec
total size is 580455520037  speedup is 4393.77

BUT, my crontab does reset on its own.  I've gotten in the habit of manually re-running the editcron.sh script once or twice per week to ensure the mirroring continues:

~# crontab -l
59 1 * * * /usr/sbin/daylight&
30 2 * * * /usr/sbin/stime&
32 2 * * * /usr/sbin/rtc -s
30 2 2 * * /usr/sbin/rtc -c
~# /ffp/start/editcron.sh
~# crontab -l
59 1 * * * /usr/sbin/daylight&
30 2 * * * /usr/sbin/stime&
32 2 * * * /usr/sbin/rtc -s
30 2 2 * * /usr/sbin/rtc -c
5 2 * * * /mnt/USB/ffp/bin/rsync -av --delete /mnt/HD_a2 /mnt/HD_b2 >> /mnt/USB/log/rsync.last.log 2>&1

Also on ffp 0.5 (~June 2010) and firmware 1.09.

Can anyone else confirm their crontab is "forgetting"?
Does anyone have ideas for resolution?

halfsoul wrote:

Can anyone else confirm their crontab is "forgetting"?
Does anyone have ideas for resolution?

I had a similar issue. I resolved it by putting a 3 minute delay in the script. It seems that the cron jobs reinitialize on startup after a few minutes and this resolved it, at least for me and a few others.

# Add a delay to work around a bootup timing issue
echo "Adding a 3 minute startup delay"
/ffp/bin/sleep 3m

Since you (hopefully) don't reboot that often, a 3 minute delay doesn't really affect anything else.

You say you rerun the script once or twice a week, you could of course add it as a cron job just to be sure and have it run daily I'm betting though that a delay will resolve it. It works for me at least.

Last edited by FunFiler (2011-04-09 13:42:40)

Thanks FunFiler.

conf file in place, and all is good. I had to add the 3m delay too. It's all working now I think!

halfsoul wrote:

FunFiler wrote:

halfsoul wrote:

Can anyone else confirm their crontab is "forgetting"?
Does anyone have ideas for resolution?

I had a similar issue. I resolved it by putting a 3 minute delay in the script. It seems that the cron jobs reinitialize on startup after a few minutes and this resolved it, at least for me and a few others.

Code:

# Add a delay to work around a bootup timing issue
echo "Adding a 3 minute startup delay"
/ffp/bin/sleep 3m

Since you (hopefully) don't reboot that often, a 3 minute delay doesn't really affect anything else.

You say you rerun the script once or twice a week, you could of course add it as a cron job just to be sure and have it run daily I'm betting though that a delay will resolve it. It works for me at least.

Thanks for the reply.

Are you saying you added a three minute delay to the editcron script?  If so, it seems that would be effective for the crontab not being updated after a reboot.  My situation is that the rsync item appears correctly after every reboot and then disappears from the crontab list without any reboot.  It simply vanishes.  I add it again by re-running the script, and then after some amount of time it vanishes again.

I have the same problem! When I check the syslogs, it appears that crond is restarted on a daily basis. The problem is that the restart is not at the same time everyday... really weird...