Crontab using rclone with date variable

Help and Support
1

rclone v1.47.0 on ubuntu linux
the following command does not work work as a crontab entry
30 20 * * * rclone copy /home/bill/tester cloud_72:/bill/rclone/date +%Y%m%d -L

crontab does not report an error after running it
it works if i enter the line (without 30 20 * * *) in a terminal so the command is validly scripted
it works in crontab if i use a fixed destination eg cloud_72:/xyz
it seems the variable part date +%... is not understood by rclone when called from crontab but it is ok when called from the command line
any suggestion
Thanks Bill

2

hello and welcome to the forum,

that version of rclone is approx 20 months old
you can update here
https://rclone.org/install/#script-installation

sorry, not a linux expert, but we have many and one should stop by soon...

in the mean time, have you tried to search the forum, for example
What am I missing in Crontab executing the .cron files? - #12 by Disgrace2029

3

wow - that was a lightning fast response, really took my breath away, many thanks. unfortunately i'm also not a linux expert but i'll obviously have to learn fast so I'll follow the instructions in the link you gave me.
once again, many thanks
Bill

4

The "`date +%Y...`" part is interpreted by the shell, not by rclone, so what you need to do is get cron to run this through the shell.

What I would do is put your command in a shell script

#!/bin/bash
rclone copy /home/bill/tester cloud_72:/bill/rclone/`date +%Y%m%d` -L

Save that in a file called /home/bill/test.sh Make sure you do chmod a+x /home/bill/test.sh then set your crontab entry to

30 20 * * * /home/bill/test.sh

That then definitely runs your command through the shell.

PS Note typing ` is really annoying in markdown!

5

just tried it and it works perfectly, many thanks it has solved a big problem for me.
Bill

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