how to email Bash script results to user

[rosslaird]

I've been looking around for awhile trying to figure out how to do what seems like a very simple thing:

I have a Bash script that runs rsync and fmirror for backups. It's only a few lines long (it just has the commands to run the backup). When I run script in a console window, I see it working away, and I see any errors it encounters. I want to email myself this output. I've tried various forms of "mail ..." in the script, but nothing I've tried works so far. I think I just don't know enough.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[lullysing]

You should use the bash redirection features for this. for example , redirecting ls to a file...

lullysing@server:~> ls -l 1>results
lullysing@server:~> cat results
total 1696
drwx------    3 lullysing users         512 2004-05-04 00:18 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x    4 lullysing users         496 2004-04-11 16:31 Documents
drwx------    2 lullysing users          48 2003-08-08 14:00 Mail
drwxr-xr-x    3 lullysing users         320 2003-07-29 23:02 OpenOffice.org1.0.1
-rw-r--r--    1 lullysing users         202 2004-04-26 16:47 cv.txt

here's another example :

lullysing@server:~> mount /no/such/filesystem 1>results 2>error
lullysing@server:~> cat results
lullysing@server:~> cat error
mount: can't find /no/such/filesystem in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

In which case the command results were in "results"and errors were in the file "error".

You dig?



_____________________________
when someone asks for your username and password, and much *clickely clickely* is happening in the background, know enough that you should be worried.

 

[clonny2]

try
cat file | bin/mail -s "SUBJECT user@domain.com

>---------------------------------------Lawrence Feldman
SR. QA. Engineer SNAP Appliance
lfeldman@snapappliance.com

 

[rosslaird]

The above is close to what I had originally (ls -l). The problem is that this sends a listing of files, but does not show other messages that I see onscreen when I run the script from a console. From the console, I see rsync's and fmirror's own messages (errors and other information), which I would like to redirect into the email.

 

[thedaver]

rsync parms 2>&1 > filename.txt;
cat filename.txt | /bin/mail -s "SUBJECT" user@domain.com;

Any output that deviates from the redirection above is the product of a poorly written program and should be brought to the author's attention.

Surfinbox.com Business Internet Services - National Dialup, DSL, T-1 and more.

http://www.surfinbox.com/business/

 

[rosslaird]

The redirection part works fine: I get the email of the text file. It's the first part that's the problem. I'm not sure where in the script to put "rsync parms 2>&1 > filename.txt;" when I enter than line into a console window I get an error message from rsync (which makes sense, since "parms" is not an rsync option).

Maybe the best thing it to actually show the script:

fmirror -Rf fmirror.conf
rsync --delete -varuzP /usr/local/

http://www/vhosts/rosslaird.info/htdocs/

/home/rosslaird/

http://www/vhosts/rosslaird.info/htdocs/

sitecopy --update office
rsync -e ssh -varuzP /home/rosslaird/ root@laird:/home/rosslaird
rsync -e ssh -varuzP /home/rosslaird/Documents/ root@laird:/disks/xandros/home/rosslaird
ls -l 1>backup.txt
mail -s "Backup Completed" ross@rosslaird.com < backup.txt

Just to be clear: I'd like the text file to have the screen output in it, in other words what I see when I run the script from a console.

 

[thedaver]

parms" was an example, sorry if you took it literally.

put the first line of your script through the last line before "ls -| 1>backup.txt" into a single script file (I think you did this. Call this file "bak.sh" (or anything else you want).

then run it from command line or crontab entry by
"./bak.sh 2>&1 1> output.txt; cat output.txt | \
mail -s "Backup Completed" ross@rosslaird.com"

The use of the "\" character at the end of lines on a bash command is a way of continuing to another line for readability without effectively hitting [ENTER] and submitting the command.

Should work

Surfinbox.com Business Internet Services - National Dialup, DSL, T-1 and more.

http://www.surfinbox.com/business/

 

[rosslaird]

Thanks for the help -- but nope, it still doesn't work.

First, I tried the line exactly as you specified it above. No dice. Then I broke it down, removing bits off the end until it worked.

I get this far: "./bak.sh", but anything after this that I put on the line causes the script to halt after fmirror runs. Even the numbers. It just takes the basic "run script" command only, no extras. If I just run ./bak.sh from the command line, it works fine (of course).

What gives?

 

[ericbrunson]

Try this:

( fmirror -Rf fmirror.conf
 [script abbreviated for succinctness...]
ls -l ) 2>&1 | mail -s "Backup Completed" ross@rosslaird.com

There's no reason to use a temp file, though if you do try this:

tempfile=/tmp/whatever

trap "rm $tempfile" EXIT
do whatever > $tempfile

This will remove the tempfile on a successful exit

 

[rosslaird]

Thanks for the tip, Eric --

but no, it doesn't work. When I put the parentheses into the script, which is called remote_backup.sh, and I run:

./remote_backup.sh

from the command line, it just hangs.

 

[ericbrunson]

That's very strange.

The only thing I can think of is that one of your utilities, fmirror or sitecopy, is written in such a way that it assumes stdout or stderr is on terminal and hangs when it's redirected. I'm not familiar with either of them, but if they have a curses interface or try to do clever things with their output like redrawing the screen to draw a progress bar, that could be the problem.

Try starting with:

( ls -l ) 2>&1 | mail -s "Backup Completed" ross@rosslaird.com

then add each directive one by one until you find the component that is causing the script to hang.

 

[rosslaird]

Thanks for all the help. Finally, I have this working -- I don't know why it works when the other things I tried did not, but at this point I'm just happy that it does. Here's what I did:

1. I created a cron job that looks like this:

0 12 *** /home/myhome/backup.txt

2. In file backup.txt, I listed the commands, using only rsync (I could have used fmirror also, but using one command for the whole thing was simpler).

3. In my home directory, I created a file called .forward, with a single line that has my email address. (Note the dot.) This allows my local mailer to send a message to my remote account (what my mail program checks).

Now, cron runs the backup and emails me exactly the right output (i.e what I see onscreen when I run it from a console).

This seems like an odd workaround, and I sort of stumbled upon the solution, but it works perfectly.

Cheers.

Ross