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: [email protected] (Cron Daemon) To: [email protected] 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 <[email protected]> and use the Debian bugtracker for Debian-specific issues.
The cronic home page is <http://habilis.net/cronic/>.

COPYRIGHT

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.