bionic (1) cronic.1.gz

Provided by: cronic_3-1_all bug

NAME
       cronic - a shell script to help control the most annoying feature of cron: unwanted emailed output


SYNOPSIS
       cronic [COMMAND]


DESCRIPTION
       Cronic  is  a  small shim shell script for wrapping cron jobs so that cron only sends email when an error
       has occurred.

       Cronic defines an error as any non-trace error output or a non-zero result code.

       Cronic filters Bash execution traces (or anything matching PS4) from the error output, so jobs can be run
       with execution tracing to aid forensic debugging.

       Cronic has no options, it simply executes its arguments.

       0 1 * * * cronic backup

       With  cronic,  you  can  turn  on  Bash's  strict  error handling and debug options (exit on error, unset
       variable detection and execution tracing) to make sure problems are caught early.


EXAMPLES
       Example cron job:

              #!/bin/bash
              set -o errexit -o nounset -o xtrace
              cp -rp data1 /backup
              cp -rp data2 /backup
              cp -rp data3 /backup

       When an error is detected, Cronic outputs a report listing the result code, error  output,  and  combined
       trace and error output. The combined output can help put error messages in context.

       Example email from cron with cronic info:

              From: user@example.net (Cron Daemon)
              To: user@example.net
              Subject: Cron <user@server> cronic backup

              Cronic detected failure or error output for the command:
              backup

              RESULT CODE: 1

              ERROR OUTPUT:
              cp: data2: Permission denied

              STANDARD OUTPUT:

              TRACE-ERROR OUTPUT:
              + cp -rp data1 /backup
              + cp -rp data2 /backup
              cp: data2: Permission denied


VERSION HISTORY
       v3 - Use mktemp -d to avoid race-conditions and security problems.

       v2  -  Corrected  command  evaluation,  so  shell  meta-chars  are  preserved  correctly (Thanks to Frank
       Wallingford for the fix).

       v1 - Initial release.


OTHER TOOLS
       Joey Hess has written a simpler perl version of cronic, named chronic.  It is available in Debian as part
       of moreutils.


AUTHOR
       Cronic was written by Chuck Houpt.
       This man page was formatted from the cronic home page by Daniel Lange.


REPORTING BUGS
       Please  report bugs upstream to Chuck Houpt <chuck@habilis.net> and use the Debian bugtracker for Debian-
       specific issues.
       The cronic home page is <http://habilis.net/cronic/>.


       Copyright © 2007 Chuck Houpt. Debian packaging © 2016 Daniel Lange.
       License CCO: Public Domain dedication v1.0 <https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.  There is NO WARRANTY, to  the  extent
       permitted by law.


SEE ALSO
       crontab(5), bash(1)