Can't open /dev/tty to prompt for more media.

[GrayMatter_1]

OK, I've come across other threads on this that say this is caused because the tape is full, but I know that is not the case. I think this is some other buffer filling up but I am not sure what.

background: every night a cron job runs to backup folders to another drive. The size of the folders being backed up is 3369128 as reported by `du -s' and the free space on the destination drive is 20680464 as reported by `bdf'. When cron runs the tar command, it prints the name every file that is going into it... I think that if i could just suppress that output that it may fix the issue. the email i get from cron is usually about 1mb.

Thanks for all your help!

Cheers!
GM

[Tim Nelson]

What are you using to copy/backup the files ?

Does the script running from cron send the output to std out ? If so just redirect to a log file .

[GrayMatter_1]

I haven't been able to redirect output from tar successfully to a log file.
below is the script that is running. I'm sure that it is sending output to std out and that is the problem.

Thanks for your help!


--Begin Script--

#!/bin/ksh
# backup script for Home directories

# create txt file containing start time
echo `date` >/backup/start_home.txt

# Remove old backup of home directory
echo Removing old home backup
rm -f /backup/home.tar
# Backup home directory
echo TAR home directory
cd "/backup" && exec time tar -cvf /backup/home.tar /home
# Approx run times from testing
# real 1:15:51.4
# user 7.5
# sys 9.1

# create txt file containing end time
echo `date` >/backup/end_home.txt

[Bill Costigan]

Have you tried leaving off the 'v' in the tar command?

Have you tried putting quotes around the tar

e.g. exec time 'tar -cvf home.tar /home > /tmp/tar_out.txt'

You didn't give any details about your problems redirecting the output so I'm guessing that the command parser was redirecting either exec or time's output.

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

Althjough the man page does not mention this, the -v option goes to stderr, not stdout. You can suppress the file names by simply removing the -v option as in:

cd "/backup" && exec time tar -cf /backup/home.tar /home

Or you can redirect tar's stderr output to /dev/null:

cd "/backup" && exec time tar -cvf /backup/home.tar /home 2>/dev/null

A cron job will always send email when there is anything for stdout or stderr.

[GrayMatter_1]

Thanks all! I am testing a couple of the suggestions posted. I appreciate everyones help. I will assign points tonight.

Cheers!
GM.