Gfilui

I added the file grive.sh to /etc/cron.daily but the command doesn't seem to be running. I also copied it to /etc/cron.hourly but there has been no change to my Google Drive directory only. The file has only three lines:

#! /bin/sh
cd /media/james/Seagate Expansion Drive/GD
grive

The permissions are read-only so I'll update those.

I used /etc/cron.hourly# chmod u+rwx grive.sh, but then when I check the permissions for the file in Nautilus, they are unchanged—I don't know why.

I can run grive manually from the terminal, and the files sync locally and online.

root@james-Streacom:/etc/cron.hourly# grep CRON /var/log/syslog
Feb 1 09:17:02 james-Streacom CRON[8696]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Feb 1 10:17:01 james-Streacom CRON[10958]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Feb 1 11:17:01 james-Streacom CRON[12897]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Feb 1 12:17:01 james-Streacom CRON[15307]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Feb 1 13:17:01 james-Streacom CRON[17043]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Feb 1 14:17:01 james-Streacom CRON[17354]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Feb 1 15:17:01 james-Streacom CRON[17705]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
root@james-Streacom:/etc/cron.hourly# cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
root@james-Streacom:/# bash -c "cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly"
root@james-Streacom:/#

Note that this may be a duplicate of The cron job doesn't work when put in `/etc/cron.hourly/` but work when defined in `crontab -e`, I'm just going through those steps.

I added echo test >/tmp/foobar.tmp to the last line of the script.

root@james-Streacom:/etc/cron.hourly# grep 'cron.hourly' /etc/crontab
17 * * * * root cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly

/temp/foobar.tmp doesn't exist.

I tried to actually run # cd /media/james/Seagate Expansion Drive/GD, and got the error -su: cd: too many arguments. I then changed the cd line in the script to cd /media/james/"Seagate Expansion Drive"/GD.

$ echo test >/tmp/foobar.tmp does create the file with test in it.
# echo test2 >/tmp/foobar.tmp overwrites test with test2.

Aside from the unquoted whitespace in your original script (which you seem to have corrected) the issue is likely with the naming of your script.

According to the DEBIAN SPECIFIC section of man cron:

 As described above, the files under these directories have to be pass
 some sanity checks including the following: be executable, be owned by
 root, not be writable by group or other and, if symlinks, point to
 files owned by root. Additionally, the file names must conform to the
 filename requirements of run-parts: they must be entirely made up of
 letters, digits and can only contain the special signs underscores
 ('_') and hyphens ('-'). Any file that does not conform to these
 requirements will not be executed by run-parts. For example, any file
 containing dots will be ignored. This is done to prevent cron from
 running any of the files that are left by the Debian package management
 system when handling files in /etc/cron.d/ as configuration files (i.e.
 files ending in .dpkg-dist, .dpkg-orig, and .dpkg-new).

Since grive.sh has a dot in its name, run-parts will ignore it.

I don't really get your question, although in my experience some commands doesn't work as expected when you add them into a script and put in a cronjob.

I'd start by adding it to new file in /etc/cron.d/test as following (I'll configure it every 5 minutes just to get some logs for testing purposes):

# m h dom mon dow user command
*/5 * * * * root [DIR_TO_SCRIPT]/grive.sh >> /var/log/grivesh.log 2>&1

Please see stdout in /var/log/grivesh.log, once you have it analized you can have cronjob configured once every hour like this (e.g. at minute 5 every hour):

# m h dom mon dow user command
5 * * * * root [DIR_TO_SCRIPT]/grive.sh >> /var/log/grivesh.log 2>&1

It is necesary to have it in /etc/cron.hourly/? Don't you preefer to have it in /etc/cron.d/ or in a crontab for your user?

Regards,